After years of negative self-talk, low confidence and low self-esteem, and a lack of appreciation for her own self-worth, Kathryn Askew took the plunge and enrolled in a Life Coaching Diploma (both to build herself up and to train to be a coach). She was amazed at the difference she saw in herself and the change that others could see in her in just a matter of months. Since then, she has also attained her certification as a Root Cause Therapy Practitioner, and continues to work on her own self-growth every day, as well as guiding others. She has a particular passion for helping women who are navigating their way forward from being “just mum”, “wife” or “partner”. Join her at Kites & Angels for a journey of self-love, self-discovery, and unapologetic confidence.
The passion: What inspired you to set up your business?
I had always wanted to have my own business, and had in fact bought a café business several years ago with an ex-partner which did not go very well.
I started out my working life in teaching and then moved through a variety of rerail roles over the years before finding what I thought was going to be my ongoing career path – a combination of nannying and caring for children with additional needs.
I absolutely loved this path that I was on, but severe, ongoing back problems combined with a ligament reconstruction on my ankle found me having to rethink my options.
As you can tell from the teaching and the caregiving roles, nurturing is part of my nature, and I had always been the person that friends sought out for support and advice. I had been considering a career in counselling or coaching for a while, but the time had never been right for me to take on the training until I was recovering from the ankle operation.
At that point, I was also still very much suffering from the after-effects of a toxic work situation the year before, and I decided that taking my coaching diploma would be of great benefit, not only to allow me to start up in business, but also to work on my own self-esteem and self-worth.
I didn’t exactly choose my niche, rather I feel that it chose me. I just knew that I really wanted to help women who were in the position that I had been in – lacking self-esteem, finding themselves lost in their motherhood role, and knowing that they wanted more but not knowing exactly what they wanted (or even how to get there).
The launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
After completing my coaching diploma, I started out slowly, as I had gone back to working part time in a nannying role while I was studying.
I worked on setting up a website and also advertised for mums who would like to get a 6-week coaching package for free so that I could gain some more experience. I am someone who really likes to be prepared, and to dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s, so I spent about 6 months juggling my part-time work with coaching women for free and collating resources, which I felt would be useful for my clients.
During this period, I also realised that I have a huge passion for learning, and I started looking for complementary modalities that I could train in to add an extra string to my bow. I started out with NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), which I found fascinating, then I also became interested in hypnotherapy.
I was convinced that I was going to go down the hypnotherapy route (and I may still do so) but then I discovered an amazing modality called Root Cause Therapy and it just felt right! I knew that this would be a fantastic complementary therapy to add into my business, so I began the training.
After those first 6 months, I cut down my nannying hours and went all in on promoting my business – the learning curve with social media marketing was steep – but I set up a Facebook Group, joined other groups and became very intentional in my content posting.
From there, I engaged the services of a couple of business coaches over the next few months to help me to really get my business up and running – my passion and expertise lie in coaching and Root Cause Therapy, not marketing, so I felt I needed that help.
The innovation: What was the biggest breakthrough for you with your business?
By far the biggest breakthrough for me and my business has been finding and working with my current business coach.
Over the last few years, through using my own coaching strategies and effectively becoming my own first client, I have absolutely soared in terms of confidence and my own self-worth, which has been an amazing journey. I had even started putting my face out there on social media and doing the occasional short video, which was a massive step for me.
Then I stumbled across a 5-day free challenge which really spoke to me – I had been feeling completely out of alignment with the coach I was working with at the time because of both their marketing strategies and the fact that I was being very heavily steered towards a different niche which I just didn’t have the passion for.
By two days into the free challenge I knew that I just had to work with this coach (even though I knew that it would mean taking huge steps outside my comfort zone and running live events). With the help of a loan from my ever supportive mum, I was able to sign up for this amazing year-long coaching programme, and I am thrilled to say that I have just completed the launch of my very first live challenge.
