
The Coaching Life
In the Coaching Life Podcast internationally renowned coach, speaker and author Phil Goddard interviews coaches and clients to give a real-life, no-filter look at the coaching profession and what it really takes to be a coach.
Latest episodes

Oct 18, 2018 • 54min
049 Antti Vanhanen
Opening Up The Empty Toolbox
As a former habit and strategy junkie, Antti noticed that none of the tools and techniques he was trying seemed to bring the long-term results he was seeking. An insight into the nature of our human experience opened up a world where Antti simply gets on with living life in his own style, and he gets to help others do the same.
Considering the human tendency to make things more complex than necessary, that might sound too easy. In this episode you’ll get a sense of Antti’s willingness to explore, experiment, simply try things out and play full out at being of service to others.
Here’s a little more about Antti:
Antti is a transformative coach who creates a space for others to rediscover their own innate wisdom, peace and resilience. When it comes to personal transformation, the only wisdom, resilience or joy that matter are your own. I help people from all walks of life to experience more joy and peace in their lives, or simply to perform better at whatever they do.
https://www.devilinagoodman.com/

Oct 11, 2018 • 55min
048 Brenton Hughes
Investing in the Unknown
It takes quite an investment and leap of faith to spend over fourteen hours on an airplane to travel to an event from which you don’t really know what you’ll get. Brenton shares his journey from the other side of the coaching relationship - as a client and avid explorer of personal development. He also shares how he has caught himself living a double life, continues to shift from people pleasing to people loving, and how he quit his well-paid job to step completely into the unknown. What’s next?
Taking steps away from what is considered normal…. Brenton is currently swimming in the unknown, having sold his home and walked away from a $110k (AUD) job in September last year. Ask him what he plans to do and you will likely get the response “I don’t know” and if you do get a more definitive answer he is probably making up a story so you won’t feel uncomfortable with his unconventional approach.
The story so far…..
For the last 20 years or so Brenton has worked as a nurse. For the first 10 years, clinically, in the field of Intensive Care in Sydney, Australia and in London, UK and more recently as a Nurse Educator, initially in ICU and developing across all areas of nursing education. It is in this period he has become more curious about himself and others. He has experienced the power of investing in himself through coaching, travelling, and attending workshops around the world to explore his curiosity.
Right now he is on a journey, which may well lead him into becoming a coach, but nothing is certain. Having chosen not to work, for almost a year, Brenton has reacquainted himself with emotions he has blocked for most of his life, fear, anger, and shame to name a few, and has enjoyed the space to continue exploring.
To be continued…
You can connect with Brenton on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/brenton.hughes.90

Oct 4, 2018 • 55min
047 Richard Morgan
Allowing the Ease of Nature
In his typically candid yet insightful manner, Richard shares his journey from lawn gardener, to gardener of the human spirit, from rampant convincing to simply embracing and loving, from a quest of endlessly searching to open-minded curiosity and exploring.
In this conversation you’ll also discover just how ‘selfishly’ Richard is always looking to bring joy and fulfilment into each and every moment.
Here’s a little more about Richard:
Richard is a gardener, both figuratively and literally, in his approach to life. Having grown up in and later run a horticultural service business for most of his life, his approach is to not fight what is but to work with and understand the environment in which we wish to grow.
Each of us is here to flower and bear some fruit and it is this work of gardening the human spirit which is the core of his coaching work.
He has worked with clients from 9 different countries from the bottom to the top of the economic scale and still the garden grows.
http://richardmorgancoaching.com/

Sep 27, 2018 • 1h 4min
046 Stacy Nelson
Emerging from a Cave, a sledgehammer in one hand and a pen in the other.
What do you do when you wake up one morning to see the world isn’t what you thought it was and it was your fault that you didn’t know more.
What do you do when you realise your work and spiritual exploration had enabled you to isolate yourself in a bubble of omm from the world, and you could no longer not pay attention to what was going on?
Stacy shares with raw honesty and passion her exploration and realisation of the darker side of consciousness, and how she has once again reinvented how she works, and is now looking to make a real difference, a useful and meaningful difference, in the world.
I implore you to read Stacy’s article on Medium, link below:
But do settle in, she suggests make some tea, it’s where she’s been…’to the edge of her consciousness and into the abyss. Fair warning - This is a long read…’
https://medium.com/@StacyNelson/the-shadow-side-of-consciousness-b788022184bf
Here’s a little more about Stacy:
The Formal Official Bio Because People Ask...
Stacy is a serial Entrepreneur. While in her corporate life she built million dollar divisions and worked in Business Development, she learned that she was indeed thoroughly unemployable and quickly outgrew every position she took on. Having built countless businesses in the past 15 years, some successfully written up in Entrepreneur Magazine and some total utter failures (or grand experiments depending on how you look at it), she realized 8 years ago that the business of transformation was the path that was most in alignment with her.
Multi-passionate to the core, she has written multiple best selling books under her own publishing company, BadAss Publishing Co., and has Mentored and Coached hundreds of Intuitive Entrepreneurs to deeper levels of success. Her greatest goal for her clients is not to raise their bottom line (although that happens auto-magically), but to have each person reach the highest levels of self trust they've ever experienced and use their innately intuitive voice to create awesomeness in the world.
You can find out more about Stacy, including her ‘Bio From My Heart’ at stacynelsonunlimited.com

Jul 19, 2018 • 55min
045 Cathy Presland
Previously working in government dealing with economics and European issues, Cathy followed her interest and curiosity about how we interact as people, how we are influenced and what contributes to human performance, and chose once and for all to jump into a career in coaching, with a commitment to give it her best shot. She now has an established business doing what she enjoyed - contributing and connecting, exploring opportunities that are there for us as we become aware of how this being human works.
Here’s a little more about Cathy:
Cathy Presland is a leadership coach to people who want to make a difference with what they do. Her clients have no fixed profile other than a vision that is bigger than themselves. "People don't typically come to me because they want to make more money," Cathy says, "they want to do something with their lives; something fulfilling, that creates a positive impact for those around them."
In her former career as an economist and policy adviser, Cathy worked with governments and organisations around the world. She set up a micro-credit fund for women in southern Africa, negotiated European regulations, managed multi-billion pound economic programmes, and designed and led global anti-poverty initiatives.
Cathy's ambition is simply to help you find your best self and to do work that is fun, meaningful, and comes from a foundation of love.
https://cathypresland.com/

Jul 5, 2018 • 57min
044 Adam Quiney
Adam shares his journey from practicing lawyer to being an executive leadership coach, revealing moments of shame, stubborn self-opinion, and what it was like to reveal aspects of himself he had been trying to hide whilst also wanting to be seen. Having invested in a lot of work on himself, Adam has an important message for aspiring coaches, as well as bringing his humour and humility into a wonderful conversation that touches on many aspects of the coaching profession, including embellishment.
Here’s a little more about Adam:
Adam is an executive leadership coach specializing in working with the Smartest People in the Room. A former software developer and attorney, Adam’s learned the hard way about the costs that come from keeping your heart safe and chasing after external rewards to feel whole and complete.
From love, Adam is connection, passion, presence, wit and brilliance. From fear, he is awkward, robotic, apathetic, irrelevant and arrogant. He’s learned to embrace all these parts of himself, and works with others to do the same in their own lives. Living with his beautiful wife and their two dogs (one of which is a cat) in Victoria, B.C., He is a man on a mission to bring the world to a more inspired and fully-expressed place.
adamquiney.com

Jun 7, 2018 • 49min
043 John El-Mokadem
What looks and even feels like failure may well be exactly what needs to happen to move you towards what you really want. In this episode John shares how going back into his I.T. work helped him become much more free as a coach and helped him increase his impact on his clients. And how those clients are showing up from seeds he has been planting for a very long time, often without even realising it…
Here’s a little more about John:
John El-Mokadem is a Breakthrough Coach based in the UK with 14 years’ experience, providing both personal and corporate coaching, training and mentorship services. John works with a Three Principles grounding to share a deeper understanding of how the mind works that can enable clients to experience a healthier, happier, more successful and creative life. The transformations John witnesses are often life changing as clients settle down into a space of ease and possibility. Most recently John has conducted an academic research study to demonstrate the transformative effects of this approach on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. A large part of his client work is now health focused and helping clients to access their own innate wellbeing. John has in recent years also worked on the faculty of Michael Neill’s Supercoach Academy and developed his own programme teaching coaches how to create Breakthrough results with their own clients. For John, this work is a more of a passion to serve and help others as the understanding he now shares had such a profound impact on so many areas of his own life.
http://breakthroughthat.com/

May 24, 2018 • 52min
042 Melissa Ford
The power of shifting to being of service. After twelves years of failing to fill workshops, Melissa hired a coach who helped her shift her focus, and since then she has continued to expand, grow and evolve. This episode gives us all an insight into the journey of an extremely experienced coach, someone who has invested significantly in her own development and whose clients continue to benefit from that investment. This one is all about service, service, and being of service.
Here’s a little more about Melissa:
Melissa Ford is a seasoned business and life coach. Her experience shows us that we can change our passions into thriving careers, allowing us to do what we love and be paid well to do it. Early on she struggled with the same fears and self-doubts that keep so many from being successful. But that changed when she finally learned how to master sales through profound service, allowing her to build a prosperous business and live a more loving and inspired life.
Today, she uses her knowledge and experience to powerfully coach entrepreneurs and coaches, helping them increase their incomes and grow their businesses by making sales exciting, genuine and profitable.
www. melissafordcoaching.com
melissa@melissafordcoaching.com

May 10, 2018 • 54min
041 Marina Pearson
Money, insecurity and freedom are just a few of the emotive subjects explored in this episode with Marina Pearson. In a wonderfully honest conversation, Marina reveals what had her go into hibernation, what happens when things go wrong, and how she has discovered what she really wants to do.
Here’s a little more about Marina:
Marina is a mum, investor, business owner, and adventurer of life.
For the last 14 years she has coached overwhelmed and busy women to light up with insight and joy so as to be a fully self expressed version of who they are.
When she isn’t coaching and running workshops she is cooking, singing, podcasting and enjoying the delights of Spain and her son.
www.marinapearson.com/scorecard

Apr 26, 2018 • 54min
040 Annie Romanos
Annie is a straight-talking, loving advocate of being yourself, and she certainly gives us an insight into life as Annie in this very open and honest conversation. Annie is in a position of freedom with her practice, she is able to be free, expressive, playful and experimental, and it’s amazing to see what being that way has brought to her and her clients…
Here’s a little more about Annie:
From her little corner of the globe which is New Zealand, Annie works with ambitious female entrepreneurs from around the world to turn their ordinary into extraordinary. She cuts through the lies of their inner critic so they can see their brilliance, uniqueness, value, and power, to grow phenomenal businesses which are 100% them. Her latest project is Start With Who™, as well as a podcast called The Business of You. She has a cat, 3 kids and a husband, lives by the sea, and regularly tries to not put her back out in yoga by competing with her yoga teaching sister.
http://www.annieromanos.com/