I’ve never had any formal executive leadership coaching. However, when Sara contacted me, I was ready to give it a shot. It turned out to be a great decision. The best thing about Sara is that she works hard to understand who you are as a human being, not just as a leader. What started out for me as a professional experiment turned into a personal journey of self discovery which has been helpful across all aspects of my life.

As a result, Sara has honed a toolbox of skills within me to help deal with a vast array of leadership challenges. I’ve made tangible changes to how I approach various aspects of my role including coaching direct reports to maximize their potential, changing the way I approach decision making and problem solving as a leader, diversifying my thinking and the team, and understanding the difference between useful and useless anxiety.

I’ve been so impressed with Sara that she is now coaching other key people within my studio and already they are seeing tangible results too. I would recommend Sara without hesitation to anyone who is looking to coach either themselves or members of their organization. She will not disappoint!

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We were a young but quickly growing business. Having grown organically, we had naturally developed a strong culture and sense of purpose, but had never framed it, put it into words a developed a Vision, Purpose and Mission Statement. Having worked in business transformation for years I knew the importance of clearly defining your vision – particularly as you’re navigating your team though big changes and growth. I needed someone external to bounce off. Someone who I hadn’t worked with before, with a fresh pair of eyes and not from our industry.

Sara really helped me focus on and get the important stuff done! Having a time in the diary every other week where we’d go through my actions forced me to spend time working on the business instead of in the business. She’d hold me to account – and being the type of person I am (a starter, but certainly not a finisher), I needed that most.

In my previous roles, working for larger companies and reliving large scale change, I was optimistic, confident and bullish. I learnt this wasn’t necessarily the case as a business owner. I was behaving much more cautiously than I thought I was.  This cautious behaviour was limiting our potential. The feelings haven’t gone away, but I now recognise them and have a process to snap out of it.

Working with Sara has definitely contributed to our growth. In figures – since we started our engagement, our run-rate revenue has doubled, our adviser headcount has doubled, and we’ve moved into a new office onsite with IBM. Over a 6 month period, we developed a clear vision, purpose and mission statement, found the confidence to grow faster (hiring more staff and investing in growth) – this was all happening, throughout the uncertainty caused by COVID. We can now see where we’re going, and we’re all working hard to get there. I’m now finding myself daring to dream more.

I can’t stress enough how important it is as a small business leader to have an ‘outsider’ who will challenge your thinking and push you. Of course I know best practice, but you’d be amazed how much of that critical thinking goes out the window when you’re in the thick of it, working frantically in the business – you lose sight of the bigger picture and quickly become a busy fool. I would definitely recommend Sara!

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Having focus and support, I’ve solved problems that have enabled both my businesses to progress quickly to the next stage. And it’s changed the way I think about how I look after these companies, how I control my time and support my team. And it’s made me realise I need to put time in my diary to reflect, address my emotions and do what do I need to do to address that. It’s been a reprogramming exercise. Which has made my businesses soar!

By virtue of getting on top of the challenges I was facing, I’ve found a big reduction in my anxiety levels and the feeling of being able to cope with situations better, provides confidence. Aligning personal goals with business goals and making sure they are symbiotic with each other has made me a happier person.

A really positive experience all around. I’d highly recommend Sara.

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I felt I wanted to do coaching because I was inspired by the character Wendy Rhoades on the Netflix series, Billions, where she helps people achieve their highest level of performance. I personally felt that it was important to have an independent sounding board to ensure that I am at my highest level.

One of the things that Sara helped me with was shifting mental blocks and anchors (that I didn’t even realise were there). I needed to break those mental cycles, push past my fears and blockers to drive forward. I really got my ‘mojo’ back through working with Sara.

Some tangible business results that have transformed the business and put us on the path to 10X growth this year include:

Transition from the kind of clients that we were working with (too many small customers that were draining our time and energy). We strategically focused the business towards higher margin, larger enterprise customers. We are now targeting big, brand name companies and getting some traction going!

As a leader, I wanted to be in control. I realised that I needed to make smart, hiring decisions. I hired a Chief Fun Officer to motivate our team, by introducing more fun at work (especially whilst working remotely). I always felt I was dragging my team along, but I gave my team some opportunities to step up, perform and ideate. I found that supporting my team and providing these opportunities to my team led to greatly increased performance. My team are now taking responsibility, and I feel like they are really in it. Our attrition rate has now fallen from 30% to 0% in the last couple of months.

I navigated issues in my personal life and resolved those issues, so I had more time and energy to focus on making the business a success.

Intangibly, I got back my spark and my energy. I had almost ‘forgotten’ that I’d done this before, due to having lost my mojo. I’d built successful businesses in the past, and I knew I could do it again. The greater my energy levels, the greater the energy of my team. We are now much more resilient to the challenges that business life throws at us!

I would not hesitate to recommend Sara to entrepreneurs and business leaders!

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The opportunity to do the coaching came at a time when there was already change happening within the organisation, as well as for me personally as I stepped up to a more senior position.  It was a real chance to talk through my concerns and issues around the leadership challenges and it helped me to reflect on what my personal strengths and weaknesses were – as well as learning how to play to the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses.  And to truly understand where I fitted into the leadership team and what I had to offer.

I felt that you really saw me – you took the time to see the person underneath and to draw out the good parts.  You took the time to understand my personal motivators and what made me who I am.

I learned that I truly am a leader and I do have a lot to offer.  I am not perfect but nobody is.  I can be impatient with people “not like me” and I need to learn what motivates others and how to play to their strengths.  I also learned that sometimes it is never going to work and people need to go their separate ways – and sometimes that is ok.  I do not need to do everything.  I need to learn to delegate and I need to learn patience if I am going to be an even better leader.

Some tangible results for me were having the courage to step forward and lead the company when a void opened up at the most senior level (CEO).  Having the confidence and the belief in myself to put a whole new strategy and vision together for the company, to build a team around me and to get their support and buy in.

To deliver the pitch…. And to win support and significant funding for it!

I found I had a real shift in mindset and a growing self-belief in myself and my leadership abilities, that surprised even me.  I guess it was always there but Sara brought it to the surface and magnified it.  I was able to understand my motivations and my frustrations better – to know what caused them and how to deal with them.  To look at myself and see where I could improve to become an even better leader.

I would 100% recommend Sara!  I am now finished the initial coaching period but we will be coming back to continue once the new leadership team has had the opportunity to settle in and gel.  I would like to extend the coaching to others in the team and find opportunities for us to be coached together as a team.

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In business as in sports, having a good coach can be a game changer, which is what I got in my sessions with Sara. As I was stepping into a new role, in a new organization for me, that was due to undergo heavy change across the board with it’s fair share of challenges, Sara was a constant in my corner, helping and guiding me along the way.

I have a tendency to want to do everything quickly, see a lot of progress and act a little more on my toes which caused me a lot of frustration as my organization was transitioning and transforming slower than I’d have liked. Sara helped me slow things down, remove the frustration and generally to see the bigger picture, pull out the positives and challenge the negatives with actionable steps to break them down.

She consistently provided sage advice, which always brought the most important items into focus and drove me to be a better leader. By working with her, myself and my organization were able to successfully navigate really sizeable challenges, which once we got through have led to 40% YoY revenue growth, a more scalable plan for future growth, all the while retaining all of our key contributors. I doubt I would have stayed let alone my whole team if it wasn’t for Sara.

She’ll add value for you regardless of your situation, but most definitely I cannot recommend her enough if you anticipate largescale, uncomfortable change occurring as she’ll help you stay focused on the most important things and see the change through!

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When I first contacted Sara my clinical career had reached a peak. I was looking for where to focus my energies next in my career (and was even thinking about changing career) and going down the route of working in consulting in a corporate environment. I needed some objectivity to that. It became clear to me early on that I wanted to harness my entrepreneurial streak and build upon the company that I had set up. It became clear I was more interested in the business side of running a service (in all its aspects).

My business has changed direction and diversified client base and income streams in the time that I have been working with Sara.

When I met Sara, Rise was delivering critical care into Spire Manchester (private healthcare organisation in the UK) and had moved into provision of junior doctors and middle grade doctors.

There’s been some changes since…

1. We then, as a business, moved into insourcing, providing doctors to to help bring down the waiting list times in the UK healthcare system. That part is still growing and is helping to diversify our client list.
2. Through delivering junior doctors, I became frustrated with an out of date “bleep” system and developed a technology solution (an app) to help streamline that process. Spire are keen to pilot that new technology. We are also now looking at development of cardiac surgery at Spire, Manchester.
3. And the big prize is to solve the problem of cardiac capacity in the North West of the UK (which has the longest waiting lists in the country). The private sector hasn’t helped the NHS in Manchester. That joined up thinking isn’t happening and we’re trying to bring private and public sectors together!

I’ve got over my “imposter syndrome” to bring on board prominent businessmen and key figures in the medical space, to support me in my big picture vision of solving cardiac capacity!

Having contracts with different organisations has been great for the business, rather than relying on one client. And I still plan to push that further.

The two big intangible changes in me has been confidence and focus. I am certainly more confident in my own abilities.  Sara is able to listen to complicated scenarios, assimilate information and extract the salient points; which helps me to see a situation and look at it differently. So, I am more able to focus and see exactly what I need to do to progress. It’s interesting because my wife says I’m now a lot more focused!

I would highly recommend Sara as a coach! I’m extremely grateful that I found her!

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The timing felt right from a personal point-of-view, but also from a company point-of-view to do coaching – I had grown in the position of President and CEO over the last 3 years, at the same time as the company saw growth and stability – I kept asking myself “how do we do better”?

Sara provided a very safe place to be open, honest, and having the ability to understand the potential that exists that you might not see and how best to unlock that potential.

We are all human, and sometimes you wonder if you are providing the right supports and doing your job well enough today – self-doubt creeps in. As the company grows, you also wonder if you are the right person for the role. I learned that this is healthy, and that self-reflection and understanding limitations is important as we all grow as leaders and that help is always there for those that look for help.

There were numerous positive tangible outcomes to undertaking this coaching, but I believe the top three were:

• Understanding the mindsets, behaviours and actions holding us back from the next level of leadership, and therefore, company success
• Identifying skills gaps within the company that are preventing the  team from delegating properly/a roadmap to fill these AND understanding exactly how to identify what characteristics are needed in employees in different functions (rather than making blanket statements like “everyone needs to be a high performer”)
• Understanding training that needs to be implemented and at what level for employees
• Simplifying the Mission Statement significantly, working on messaging and identifying new company values based on what they currently do every day

The timing worked well – we had just come out of a busy year, added a new team member to the Management Team, so a non-tangible result was more a recognition of the team and recognition of the behaviors we hold (positive and negative) – it really brought together a certain mindset and one that we
look forward to sharing with the wider team.

I would 100 Percent recommend Sara as a coach

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We are a smaller technology company,  and we were going through some quite big changes at the time I met Sara. And we were growing. We were changing the business model,  and pivoting. We were getting some new investors on board.  We had new people coming in.  And in a nutshell,  it was something I saw as a need of having a pillar,  some code,  connected to the founder team to help us get through these changes. It’s so easy to slip away from, I’ll say,  prioritizing our company values, during change.

I have been positively surprised about how Sara helped us “address the elephant in the room” and helped us have much needed discussions, as a team, which sometimes have been difficult. The whole purpose of this was to make our business more effective and increase collaboration across important decisions we needed to make. Sara gave really fantastic support, helping us facilitate these things and be able to to flip the coin and looking at ourselves in different ways,  both from from a weakness and strength perspectives as well. This has really helped our team cohesiveness and success.

There really was a high need for individual performance but we were often misaligned on expectations.  And because this is a multi-cultural team coming with various backgrounds and also experienced in different ways; we found that communication was often a challenge. It required additional attention to certain things and particularly in how to communicate and make decisions together when you’re working across time zones. Sara really helped us get clear on how to do this better.

We have much better clarity of what we are and who we are as a company and how we’re contributing well or not well to the business, the individual role we’re playing and most of all,  the common goal we want to achieve together.  We also know how to support each other in asking for help as well.  Asking for help is sometimes most difficult, even though this should be the most easiest part.

Sara has been a massive help for us.  And coaching is just something that’s definitely a recommendation to bring on in any company,  whether they’re bigger or small. I cannot overstate the value of having third party objective support to help us move forward as a team and as a company.

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I wanted to do coaching because you do get to a point where you start to plateau. And as soon as I felt that, I thought, I’ve got to find some way of having a learning mechanism for myself to develop further.

Right from the start, I could just see that Sara gets me, understands what my pain points are, and has business experience herself. A lot of coaches that I’ve been told about or come across don’t have that. They are almost academic. And I think what I found with Sara was that she’s done all of that entrepreneur experience, and has then decided to go into coaching. Because that’s then relatable to me.

I thought we would be much more superficial in dealing with challenges and new learnings, but I found myself unearthing unexpected things. Sometimes it’s like working with a diagnostician. It was really profound to learn that these, even, childhood influences, and people around you have such a profound effect in how you see the world. And I think a lot of that is this huge, revelatory kind of moment where you’re like, “that’s why I do that. Let’s choose to do different.”

I think some of the big tangible highlights for me were stopping always chasing revenue growth (something that has been a really difficult thing to change). And a refocus towards profitability, rather than chasing revenue, that was really useful to me, because that was part of my real growth through this process.

And one of the other really big ones, I think, has been the way I coach others. So coaching other people through a lot of their issues, and a lot of my teams, I’m often spending a lot of effort coaching them. But now I have a step formula that I picked up from our work on how I do that. Whereas before, it was very haphazard. I was spending hours with different team members, and meaning well, but probably, just haphazardly trying to coach them. It saves me a lot of time, it’s appreciated, and it has really great results.

Sara gets the business world and gets the coaching world. She’s invested heavily into improving herself. So, anyone with a growth mindset will really benefit from that, because you’re pairing up, with someone who’s got a growth mindset themselves, and, and really understands that they’ve got to be building themselves up further and further. Learning never stops.

I can recommend that Sara is someone who’s able to bring the best out in people. I think that’s a natural ability. I think some people are born with it. And she’s recognized that and is able to really utilize it, in a way that relates directly to the business environment.

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