Client Success Stories | Business Productivity Coaching

Read real client success stories about finding clarity, making better decisions, creating stronger systems, and building better ways to work and live.

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Client Success Stories

Business and Productivity Coaching Success Story

Susan is an artist and artisan, creating sumptuous marbleized home décor and accessories she describes as “beautiful things that make you smile.” While the beauty of Susan’s work is unparalleled, she struggled to develop a business structure that supported her creative efforts and protected her from the strain that often keeps artists from achieving commercial success.

Art should never be predictable, but the business systems of an artist must be. We began our coaching work when Susan recognized that to confidently create, she had to avoid feeling obligated to work incessantly just to keep afloat. Like many solopreneurs, she felt the pressure of constantly being on guard for when the next shoe might drop. Susan needed effective financial systems, improved productivity, and clarity to achieve her vision of the future.

FINANCIAL CLARITY THROUGH SYSTEMS

The business of art requires very different skills from the creation of art. In some ways, the art itself may seem to be created by magic, but billing clients or filing taxes is anything but magical.

First, we worked together to establish attainable financial goals. Susan would eventually invest time and effort into QuickBooks, but we began with the basics in a way that made information relevant and logical for Susan to process – by making money beautiful!

Susan acquired a pretty notebook and divided it into sections, tracking all business income and both business and personal expenses. With a clearer sense of the numbers, Susan was able to improve her business decision-making process and understand the relative impact of these decisions.

Analyzing the cost of production, in terms of both materials and Susan’s time, meant Susan could invest her effort in the most profitable creations and gain clarity regarding what she could stop making. Susan welcomed the revelation that some unprofitable products were those that didn’t even give her joy to create! She could also develop dependable supply levels, ensuring she had the inventory needed to meet demand and accommodate holiday and other seasonal needs.

Over time, Susan recognized she could move from a 90% physical/10% online business to the reverse. This set off a powerful chain of activity, increasing her focus on redesigning her website while eliminating the need for, and expense of, a brick-and-mortar storefront.

Tracking income and expenditures gave Susan a sense of mastery over what was really happening in her financial life, enabling her to better manage expenses, spot the financial and energy costs of unprofitable activities, and understand the value of her time relative to the money she made.

PERSONAL PRODUCTIVITY SYSTEMS

Time and task management, especially for an artist, may lack a logical flow. It’s easy to follow the muse rather than the clock. Susan’s success in handling her schedule hinged on two factors: planning and scheduling work time, and designating restorative personal time. This meant implementing a calendar system that wouldn’t impede her creative impulses, and making sure all prioritized activities were given ample time for completion.

Even if the artistic instinct can’t be governed by time, production of art must be. Similarly, business tasks can’t be put off until inspiration strikes. Using the coaching process to brainstorm aloud, organize her thoughts, and get feedback, Susan achieved the clarity she needed to be more strategic in her business decision-making.

Susan began by identifying everything she was doing and evaluating the relative worth of each task. Creating monthly production goals helped her visualize where time had to be spent. Instead of working according to her gut, Susan worked her plan, confident that she was spending her high-energy hours on important work and developing ideas, then bringing them to fruition. A reality check of how long it took to accomplish administrative tasks, from handling mail and phone calls to dealing with paperwork, made it easier to create blocks of time for the entrepreneurial side of things.

Susan also recognized that her own time had to be spent on work she was uniquely qualified to do. To that end, she hired a college art student to assist with finishing, packing, and shipping products, leaving Susan more time to shine creatively.

Next, we addressed Susan’s need for self-care. With a flexible but realistic schedule for creative and business tasks, Susan knew when she had time available to focus inwardly. The coaching process gave Susan a sounding board to help her recognize successes and areas requiring improvement. She developed a series of empowering mantras, including, “NO is a complete sentence,” and “Every time you say yes to someone else, you say NO to yourself.” Susan came to embrace the concept that, “If everything is important nothing is important.”

IDENTIFYING GOALS, ATTAINING DREAMS

Susan could envision what a piece of décor should look like, but coaching helped her develop a vision of what her whole life could look like if she defined, and then achieved, her goals.

Financial goals don’t merely give clients something to work toward; they provide a framework for identifying what success means. Under pressure to earn money for the basics, it’s difficult to maintain enthusiasm. However, entrepreneurs who recognize that they are on target to reach meaningful financial benchmarks can work with less stress or pressure, secure in the knowledge that they are on the right track. Such confidence means artists like Susan can take time to recharge without worry or guilt.

Defining personal and professional success helped Susan create her ideal future. Clear revenue benchmarks meant Susan could decide how profits would support both the business and a comfortable life, including periodically stepping away from the creation process to get re-inspired and creating a home life that nurtured her. All of this yielded what Susan calls “Creation Joy,” the happiness of doing what she loves.

As a solopreneur, Susan credits having a trusted advisor with whom she can talk through business challenges as critical to her success. Confident in a financial foundation and operational plan to drive her business, she achieved one of her biggest personal goals: purchasing a beautiful house!

Update: Susan and I continue to coach regularly, as we have for many years. She tells me I’m the one person she can talk to about her work. Our coaching gives her a trusted place to think out loud, organize her thoughts, weigh options, and make decisions with clarity as her business continues to succeed.

Watch the fabulous House Beautiful video of Susan creating. We call 2020 the year Susan went from House Beautiful to Beautiful House. Susan invites you to visit Shandell’s for the perfect “thing to make you smile.”

Leadership and Productivity Coaching Success Story

Jim is a physician and medical leader, balancing responsibility for his own patients with leading a team of physicians. He found his work meaningful, but the volume of administrative responsibilities competing for his attention often left him overwhelmed. Too much time was going to email, documentation, and other necessary tasks, leaving too little focused time for the work that required his judgment, attention, and leadership.

Our coaching focused on three areas: managing email and administrative demands, creating focused time for important work, and strengthening his leadership practices.

MANAGING EMAIL AND ADMINISTRATIVE WORK

Jim’s inbox had become a significant source of stress. With more than 1,000 unread messages, everything seemed important and nothing ever felt finished.

We began by creating systems that helped Jim distinguish between what required his attention and what did not. He used Outlook rules to move lower-priority messages out of his primary inbox and archived older messages that no longer required action. This made it easier to see and respond to what was timely and important.

Just as important, we worked on Jim’s expectations. He had been treating nearly every email as equally urgent and putting too much effort into responses that did not require it. He began applying the 80/20 Rule, recognizing that every reply did not need to be perfect and that many messages required far less time and attention than he had been giving them.

Rather than continually processing email throughout the day, Jim began batching routine messages and setting aside focused time for those requiring more thought. Email became something he managed instead of something that managed him.

CREATING TIME FOR IMPORTANT WORK

Jim also felt pressure to accomplish every type of work every day, even on days devoted primarily to seeing patients. We challenged the assumption that everything had to fit into every day.

A weekly planning session helped him look across the entire week, identify his most important responsibilities, and determine when the work could realistically happen. Instead of asking, “How can I get everything done today?” he began asking what was most important and what would actually happen if something waited.

Time blocking gave different kinds of work a place in his schedule. Patient care, documentation, meetings, administrative responsibilities, and focused project work no longer had to compete for the same hours.

On non-patient days, Jim protected larger blocks for deep work. He also intentionally left buffer time for the physician-management issues and unexpected problems that inevitably arose.

This more realistic approach allowed Jim to focus more fully on the work in front of him. It also helped him protect time outside of work for his family, exercise, and the other priorities that made his life more fulfilling.

LEADING MORE INTENTIONALLY

As Jim gained more control over his own time and attention, we also focused on how he led his team.

He improved the structure of meetings by reserving the final minutes to summarize decisions, clarify action items, and identify who was responsible for what. He kept ongoing notes about ideas for future discussions and team commitments, creating greater clarity and accountability.

His revised schedule also gave him more room to be present with the people he led. Regular check-ins and more flexibility for conversations with physicians helped him stay connected to what was happening, collaborate more effectively, and address problems before they became larger issues.

Better personal productivity ultimately supported better leadership. Jim was no longer simply trying to keep up with everything coming at him. He had systems that helped him decide what deserved his attention and the space to give that work his best thinking.

Update: The tools available to Jim have changed dramatically since we first worked on these challenges. AI now helps with some of the rote work that once consumed so much of his time, including patient documentation, summarizing information, and drafting routine communications. That has reduced some of the administrative burden, but it hasn’t eliminated the need to decide what matters, where to focus, and how to use the time that technology gives back. The productivity systems and leadership practices we developed continue to help Jim direct more of his attention to the work that requires him: caring for patients, making decisions, leading people, and solving complex problems.

WHEN BUSINESS, LEADERSHIP AND PRODUCTIVITY COACHING COME TOGETHER

What Clients Say

“I’ve coached with Ellen every two weeks for 12 years. When we first started working together, I came to her for productivity coaching. What I found was someone who could help me think through far more than how I manage my time. Ellen has helped me navigate complex business transitions, financial decisions, strategic planning, and problems I could not easily talk through with anyone else.

Over the years, my business has grown far beyond what I imagined when we first started working together. Ellen has helped me think through decisions that changed the trajectory of my business and helped me become a clearer, more effective thinker and leader.

What makes Ellen different is that she sees the whole picture. She can move from productivity to business strategy to a personal challenge without losing the thread. Her coaching has helped me not only build a more successful business, but create a much higher quality of life. I could go on for days about how amazing she is. There’s a reason I call her “Wonderful Ellen.”

Richard Console, Attorney

Business and Leadership Coaching Success Story

Rachel found inspiration in her career as an executive director at a nonprofit for youth education, but she was frustrated by a lack of institutional vision. Without clear priorities, the organization – and thus, Rachel – seemed to jump from project to project without an orderly plan for achievement and growth.

Evaluating Rachel’s challenges, we saw that solutions required improving clarity and prioritization at the personal, interpersonal, and board levels.

PERSONAL CLARITY

At the most basic level, Rachel was experiencing burnout. She never felt that she had adequate resources and support, and unwilling to disappoint anyone’s expectations, she kept taking on more work without replenishing herself. We explored two main strategies for improving Rachel’s productivity.

First, Rachel outlined a time map, creating a vision of what her ideal week would look like. Setting intentions for how she’d spend time if she controlled her schedule was essential to actually gaining control. As Rachel began to plan her ideal week, she made sure to include self-care to recharge her body and mind, and scheduled activities with her children, date night with her husband, and a girls’ night out with friends. To make the plan workable, we also defined two metrics – “ideal” and “success.” While it might be ideal to do four workouts a week, Rachel would consider the plan a success if she achieved that goal twice a week.

Rachel integrated changes to her schedule in stages. In Phase 1, twice-weekly yoga, date night, and quality time with her children were key priorities. Only once these were in place did she add time for exercise during Phase 2 and meditation and a girls’ night out in Phase 3. Eventually, Rachel saw that scheduling personal time was the only way to protect it.

While self-care proved essential for preventing burnout, Rachel also needed uninterrupted time for creative planning on key work projects, something that felt like an unattainable luxury during a typical office workday. We scheduled out-of-office creative “thinking” blocks four mornings per month; on those days, Rachel worked from home and then worked in the office from lunchtime through the early evening. Eventually, she embraced the change of pace and experimented with different work venues, including coffee shops, parks, and the public library.

Freeing time for creative work required eliminating distractions. Rachel had to adjust her team’s expectations, limiting communication on those mornings to emergency situations only. Confident that they’d have access to Rachel upon her arrival in the afternoons, they were better able to avoid interrupting her out-of-office time.

BOARD-LEVEL CLARITY

Rachel reported that the previous strategic planning meeting of her board of directors felt neither strategic nor well planned. The board wasn’t supplying essential direction and its paid consultant failed to provide firm guidance in addressing systemic problems. Through our coaching, we identified that to achieve success, the board had to address the needs for increased funding and staffing and establish criteria for making decisions about expanding programs.

Rachel had to clarify program staffing plans and fundraising goals before setting anything further in motion. She collaborated with the treasurer to gather essential information and created a plan to obtain a grant to cover increased staffing expenses. Taking the leadership reins, Rachel planned a working session with the Executive Committee, creating a meeting agenda to focus expectations on two key decisions. These efforts allowed her to secure commitments for staffing levels and enabled her to move forward on fundraising goals.

Rachel also used her weekly out-of-office creative time to re-prioritize her approach. Able to focus without interruption, she crafted a position statement regarding critical community issues to ensure that the board’s future efforts all dovetailed in support of that position. She also worked with the board’s president to lay the groundwork for a workable strategic plan.

Overhauling the planning process provided improved structure and efficiency. Rachel guided the board toward developing the next year’s strategic initiatives, preventing over-commitment by limiting deliverables to three or four per program. This also enabled stakeholders to clearly view and analyze the entire forthcoming year for balance and manageability.

With these plans in place, Rachel felt more focused, less overwhelmed, and better supported by the organization.

STAFFING CLARITY

In addition to managing her own time and priorities and that of the organization, Rachel was facing another obstacle. A much-adored team member wasn’t following through on assignments. Rachel suspected that there was a mismatch between the employee’s goals and those of the nonprofit.

Rachel needed clarity on a variety of questions. Was the employee in the right position, doing the right work? How could she leverage his strengths to get the best results? How could she help this employee meet his goals while ensuring those of the organization were met? Most importantly, what skills would Rachel need to employ to clearly communicate the staffer’s responsibilities while collaborating with him to create a sustainable solution?

Through coaching, Rachel came to recognize what she wanted (for the employee and for the organization), what compromises would be acceptable, and even what would be the worst that could happen if the employee chose to leave.

Now confident in her strategy, Rachel invited the employee to meet using collaborative language to indicate that she wanted to work together to find a solution. She explained what she needed: his respect for the boundaries of the organization, the understanding of the importance of working as a unified, strategic team, and his commitment to prioritizing the organization’s needs and not his own preferences. The resulting conversation was a positive one, giving Rachel high hopes for the employee’s future and more confidence in her leadership skills.

Update: Rachel has since moved into a new leadership role, and we continue to coach regularly. Our work gives her a place to organize her thoughts, clarify priorities, and talk through the many decisions and challenges that come with her work. We might be thinking through an issue with a funder or team member one moment and digging into a personal productivity challenge the next. As her work has changed and grown, the coaching has grown with it.