How Working with a Life Coach Changed, Well, My Life

Plus a Q&A with my coach! 💫

Screengrab from a zoom with Kristyn Smit, my coach

In the fall of 2022, I was adrift. I was at a major career crossroads, feeling drained, frustrated, and exploited by my corporate job. I was exhausted from red tape, creative differences, and underappreciation.

My workload and responsibilities had been consistently increasing with no compensation or acknowledgment. When I presented the case to receive the title and salary commensurate with my work, the SVP told me I was being “emotional and ungrateful.”

I knew I wanted to leave my job, but for WHAT? I’d spent the last few years staying at the company while I “figured out my next step,” but no next step had clarified for me. I did NOT want to work for another corporation as a tiny cog in the machine, and I was so burnt out I didn’t even know if I wanted to stay in the same field. I was terrified by freelance — I loved the idea of its flexibility and ownership, but the total autonomy was too daunting. I thought about dropping it all and working in a coffee shop, but scrapping a decade of experience in my field felt like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Emotionally, I’d been doing the work. I’d spent years with the same therapist who had helped me through my mother’s death and giving up drinking. I was making personal progress! New parts of me were coming alive! But unpacking childhood trauma, rewiring my brain, and developing coping skills weren’t helping me with my professional life or career conundrum.

One September afternoon, I came home in tears from the office (an office—another thing I did not want to deal with anymore) after a particularly deflating, frustrating day. I had almost abruptly quit that morning —something far outside my character—and I saw no way out. The job I had once loved had soured into a deep and painful source of discontent. I had nowhere to go and felt TRAPPED. What happened next sounds like a scene from a movie, but I promise you this is really how it happened.

I was sitting on my couch, sobbing in frustration. I took a breath, and, out loud, I asked the universe to help me. To send me a sign. Then I opened TikTok….

The first video that popped up was a radiant brunette in an amber turtleneck. She was talking about what it’s like to struggle as a multi-passionate and not know what direction to take. She discussed burnout, creative frustration, people-pleasing, fear, expectations that overachievers and perfectionists set for themselves, and a ton of other topics that felt like they were addressing me personally. Her name was Kristyn, and she was a life and career coach.

The universe had responded immediately.

I was captivated by her content and started devouring videos. She described “the new rich” as having freedom, meaningful work, creative autonomy, and human connection. In bite-sized pieces, she tackled topics like knowing when to quit your job, unlearning limiting beliefs, and forging a new path for yourself as a creative multi-hyphenate. She said creativity is the answer to fulfillment. I was sold. I went to her website and set up a free introductory call. I had no idea what a coach even really did, but I was ready to find out.

(L) Nov 2022, depressed at my corporate office (R) Nov 2023, creative directing a client shoot on my terms

I liked Kristyn immediately. She was as approachable and understanding as her videos made her seem. She got me. I signed up for her one-on-one Career Catalyst program. For the next three months, we met once a week on Zoom, and in between calls, I worked on prompts, thought starters, and other “homework.”

By the end of the 90 days, I had broken through fear I didn’t even realize I had. I had admitted my long-held dreams to myself and others —I wanted to be a content creator and build a lifestyle brand like all the authors, entrepreneurs, and creatives I admired. I wanted to make videos, write articles, travel the world, and help others tap into their own creativity. We wrote down the phrase Millennial Oprah.

But what to do in the meantime? The in-between? How could I go from being miserable at a corporate job to building a lifestyle brand? That’s when we tackled freelance. I would start my own company and become a consultant. In working for myself, I could have the flexibility and freedom to create a schedule that allowed me to pursue my creative dreams. I had the experience, the network, and the expertise. I just needed some structure, guidance, and confidence. We built out a business plan and timeline. I updated my website, resume, and portfolio and started putting out feelers. I just had to wait until I received my annual bonus, and I could quit. Ready to go.

Then, the universe helped me out again. In the final week of January, the sinking media company I worked for was shoveling water out of their lifeboats in the form of mass layoffs, and my ticket was up. I was… euphoric. Other than how much severance I was getting, my only question for HR was, “If I post a TikTok about how happy I am to get laid off… can you take back the money?” (The answer was no.)

Two years later, I run my own consulting business, working half as much as I did at my old job and making roughly the same amount of money. I’ve gotten thousand-dollar brand deals as a TikTok creator and launched this Substack. I’m happier about my professional trajectory than I’ve ever been. Working with Kristyn was, hands-down, the best investment I’ve made in my career.

I’m not here to proselytize or sound like an infomercial, but instead to share because until I’d worked with a coach, I had no clue what it looked like. I’ve often described it as like a grownup guidance counselor. When you’re in High School, it’s “normal” to not know what you want to do with your life. You get help with college applications, post-school decisions, and other significant life steps. There’s no reason a person should know how to do it on their own then, and there’s no reason we should know at 35, either. I believe in asking for help, admitting when I don’t know how to do things, and paying experts.

SO. Now that you know my experience with coaching, I brought in the expert herself, my wonderful coach Kristyn Smit, to answer some reader questions.

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First off, can you give a brief description of what you do? I know people are extremely interested in what a holistic life + business coach does, and I’d love to hear how you describe it. 

• In a nutshell, I help visionary spirits embody their authenticity, alchemize their creativity, and design unique entrepreneurial ecosystems that prepare them for deeply fulfilling lives. 

***See Kristyn’s post What To Expect When We Work Together

What sets a coach apart from a therapist? 

The coaching industry is unregulated, so the title “coach” varies greatly, depending on a person’s framework. I’m personally certified in NLP and psychosomatics, so a large part of our work together is subconscious reprogramming. This can feel much like therapy in the way I ask thought-provoking questions, but instead of digging deep into past trauma and solving for “why,” I’m more focused on acknowledging the way trauma and beliefs have influenced your behaviors and inner dialogue, honoring that those beliefs once served and protected us, but ultimately forgiving the past, accepting what is, and consciously choosing to move forward. 

• Unlike consultants and mentors who give advice and don’t dig so deeply into the subconscious, our work together helps you cultivate empowerment, self-trust, and self-confidence in your own inner truth, values, and capabilities by coming to your own conclusions without my opinions. 

• What’s unique about my 90-day container is that we are rewiring your neural pathways

• 1. By digging deep in our 1:1 sessions and 2. Integrating those lessons week-by-week consistently for three months. That repetition and reinforcement paired with exercises and daily support from me (via Voxer) is truly what accelerates the transformation. Therapy, on the other hand, is a much slower process, where we often don’t have unlimited access to our therapist outside of our 1:1 sessions.

Our work together helps you cultivate empowerment, self-trust, and self-confidence in your own inner truth, values, and capabilities.

When and why do you recommend people seek coaching? What point in life “warrants” working with a coach? 

***See Kristin’s post here: 5 Signs its Time to Invest in a Life Coach

• Coaches are strategic visionaries, meaning we’ll get you where you want to go further and faster. Here are some signs that it’s time to invest in a coach:

  • You’re self-aware, motivated…and still stuck. You're falling into patterns that sabotage significant progress despite consuming self-help content, daydreaming, and even taking small steps toward your dreams. You’re ready to kick what is no longer serving you, using a blend of modalities that go beyond talk therapy. 

  • You’ve got several goals and ideas that might be overwhelming, which causes confusion and self-doubt ‘cause you don’t know where to start. Perhaps you can kinda see the big vision, but the micro-steps are unclear. You need consistent clarity and strategy to get there!

  • You crave accountability and structure from someone who “gets it.” Part of you thinks you can build this dream alone, but another part knows it’s helpful to have an objective confidant who can help you challenge your own biases and/or limiting beliefs, clarify your steps, embody your strengths, and hold your vision as 100% achievable! 

  • You’ve lost your sense of self and purpose. You yearn to wake up inspired and fulfilled. Maybe you’re burnt out, unsure how you got to this point in your life, not as healthy as you’d like to be, want to make more money, nurture your creativity, experience profoundly loving relationships, etc. You want to remember who you are, what you value, and what’s possible for this one life!

  • It’s undoubtedly time to invest when you decide you won’t spend one more second settling for your current reality. You know, on a scale of 1-10, that what you truly want is a TEN and that the potential long-term regret of not pursuing your vision far outweighs your current fear or doubt. 

How do you set benchmarks for goal setting when working with a coach? How do you measure progress? 

• I break our goals into:

  • 1. Tangible goals like “left the job and signed my first client by (date)”

  • 2. Self-leadership, Self-regulation, and Behavior Change like “noticed my immediate fear response to posting on social media  and instead of ruminating in that, I shook out that emotion, took a few physiological sighs, recorded, and published!”

• During our first session, we do a comprehensive assessment to understand where you’re at and what’s holding you back. Then we establish your 90-day goals and long-term vision, built out in Miro so that we can both visually see it each session. Plus, I remind you of the vision regularly, and by the end of our 90-days, most clients have successfully achieved both the inner and outer goals.

• What I’m most proud of (and deeply fulfilled by) is witnessing my clients’ internal transformations, which come from the self-leadership and regulation. In our short time together, they begin noticing + feeling the changes in their own thought processes, self-motivation, and creative expression. They’re no longer strictly focused on ticking the boxes, following a rubric, and achieving something just for the sake of achieving for external validation. They’re now more compassionately motivated by joy versus guilt, which is an incredible tool to have if you’re self-employed, especially. Those are key signs that the body is releasing fear at a subconscious level and expanding into safety (and, therefore, expression). It’s truly a privilege to watch someone reconnect with their authentic power, take action in alignment with that, and match their external world with their internal desires. That shift in energy is contagious!!

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Thank you, Kristyn! You can find her all over the internet: TikTok, Instagram, Website.

We had an additional exchange about the connection between coaching and creativity, and I can’t wait to share that with you next week!

In the meantime, do you have any other specific questions about coaching? Have you ever worked with a coach? I’d love to hear about your experiences and curiosity!