Former Quality Director for Herz Europe Brings Her Branding Expertise to Coaching

Interview with ICA Coach, Lynne Elder
(Branding Coach, UK)

Lynne Elder is passionate about enabling women to reach their full potential and experience the freedom, excitement and personal fulfilment that a successful career or business delivers.

As a marketing coach and speaker, Lynne specialises in helping professional women build a thriving practice or career by leveraging their personal brand.

A 2012 graduate of ICA, Lynne now blends her extensive marketing expertise and coaching skills to help executive and small business clients build powerful personal brands that result in success, whether inside an organization or as an entrepreneur.

As a former quality director for Hertz Europe and Hertz UK and marketing director for The Concorde Initiative Ltd Lynne has extensive of experience in brand identity and credibility, brand differentiation marketing and sales strategy and marketing communications planning.

With a special focus on women – the result of her experience of being personally inspired by the inner strength of women around the globe and humbled by their resilience in sometimes dreadful circumstances.

Interview

Merci: Hi. I’m talking with Lynne Elder from Swansea South Wales in the U.K. and I’m here in New York. How are you today?

Lynne: Hi, Merci. I’m fine thanks, nice to see you.

Merci: Great. Nice to reconnect with our alumni. Lynne graduated from ICA in 2012. So, tell us a little bit about how you came to coaching.

Lynne: [agrees] Well, I started off in business over 35 years ago. After a successful career in marketing and operations and then in culture change.

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: I set up my own business consultancy. So, I ran that successfully for a number of years and then I decided I really like to focus on coaching specifically, executive coaching. So I then realized actually I wanted to be probably qualified in coaching and that’s when I find the ICA.

Merci: Oh, great.

Lynne: Here I am.

Merci: Great. So, are you executive coaching now?

Lynne: Well, I’m not. And there’s an interesting tale behind that.

Merci: Oh, let’s hear it.

Lynne: Well I mean executive coaching seemed to be a natural thing for me to do because I had so many years in business and while I was in business I used to coaching style management. Now, it probably wasn’t called coaching way back then but that’s exactly what it was. So it made sense when I found I was going to become a coach to focus on executive coaching. But you know as I went through the classes with the ICA I noticed something that actually made me change my focus. And as I was, you know, interacting this all the fellow students on the classes, I could hear that they were going to be really, really excellent coaches but there was a pattern that I was picking up which was a lot of them were really quite confused and lacking in knowledge as to how to actually market themselves and build the practice and they really go from, you know, one extreme of the spectrum which is not having the knowledge to market through to the other extreme which was actually sometimes a bit of reluctance to get into marketing that almost marketing and charging for their services was a little bit alien to them.

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: And as I went through my class I thought, you know, all these wonderful coaches aren’t there. They’re fantastic at coaching but struggling to build a good coaching practice because their marketing is letting them done.

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: So, then I came to do my research paper Merci and I did my research paper on marketing a coaching practice.

Merci: Oh, great.

Lynne: And as I was gathering all of the information actually the statistics kind of confirmed while I was picking up.

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: Which was sort of all of the coaches out there in the world a [inaudible] don’t make a good living.

Merci: Right.

Lynne: And it’s largely done to the research show a lack of marketing. So, I put all of that in my little brain and I thought, you know, what I think I really want to do and speak to my own passion is not executive coaching. It is actually to help my fellow coaches develop good coaching practices.

Merci: Oh, wow!

Lynne: So, that they’re able to work in their passion.

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: And help more people and in that way I’m fulfilled.

Merci: Oh, my goodness that’s wonderful. It’s wonderful and as a business coach myself who runs business express for ICA, you’re so astute, you kick this up, your background, you’re now, you know, you had two places to go, you know executive coach on marketing and you marry the two in a way and you found this beautiful blend and that’s your coaching niche and your research paper done for your ICA requirement really help to do and what a great way to use an assessment to do something that would really serve you going forward.

Merci: Yeah.  Really. Oh, it’s delightful to hear you’ve made such a journey.

Lynne: Thank you.

Merci: Yeah.  Well, I’ve got to ask you this. I asked all our Day in a Life of coach guest this question. You could tell the world one thing about coaching line, what would it be?

Lynne: [agrees] Well, coaching for me is enabling someone to maximize their potential.

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: It’s to really go inside themselves and work on what makes them [inaudible]

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: How they can best use their own talents and their innate ability.

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: And the key is that they find this out for themselves. So, you know, from the years in business I now that consultant, outsiders can come in and can help accompany our staff attain but to really get it in to the [inaudible] and has to be self-driven and coaching is just fantastic for that.

Merci: Yeah.  Oh, good point. Well, you know, thanks for spending this time with us. Quickly how do people get a hold of you?

Lynne: Well, I have websites which is She’s Smart Marketing because I practice what I preach.

Merci: Okay.  [laughing]

Lynne: So, my niche is women female coaches.

Merci: Okay.  All right.

Lynne: So, She’s Smart Marketing.code@UK is my website.

Merci: Love the name.

Lynne: And I’m also on LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter.

Merci: All right.  Well, thank you. Have a great I guess sunny day there in Swansea and thank you again for talking with us.

Lynne: All right.  You’re very welcome, Merci. Nice to see you again.

Merci: Bye-bye.