“What I got from coaching”

- anon. journalist

I’ve been a freelance journalist for more than twenty years now. I love it despite being overshadowed by the knowledge that, as David Mellor so memorably put it, I was drinking in the last chance saloon. Or to use another trope, I was supplying brass to the horse tack industry at the moment that Henry Ford launched the Model T.

I have been gently contemplating a career after journalism, when the structural changes brought about by the internet had finally driven the last paper-based publication out of business. But I was expecting this all to happen in six years not six weeks.

October 2008 was a fantastic month. It was the freelance life at its very best. I met the Prime Minster at Number Ten, trained with an SAS stunt man, profiled one of the country’s leading businessmen and finished writing the web site for a top ad agency.

But then on the first of November, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the phone just stopped ringing as if it had been pulled from the wall. Ad agencies slashed their budgets so all my lucrative copywriting went. I was editing an e-zine for a bank, sadly it was a Scottish bank. That was spiked. Newspapers cut their pages and all of a sudden freelance journalism wasn’t the brilliantly fascinating independent career choice of weeks previously. It was simply a short cut to poverty.

As the economic situation worsened, I resolved to work harder, I resolved to work smarter, I resolved to embrace the opportunities offered by the internet and the recession. But as the weeks turned into months my resolve started to dissolve.

I grew timid about suggesting ideas to newspapers because I knew the odds were against me. Working alone, I lost faith in my ability to identify a story. My energy sagged badly. I gradually became undirected and unfocused at the very time I needed to be most on the ball.

I urgently needed to either find a way to make journalism work or to find other ways of making a living. It was only after weeks of inertia that I realised I needed support.

But when you are earning nothing and rapidly going broke, even the cost of help can seem like a dangerous gamble. It certainly did to me at the time. It was only when a friend who is also a business coach convinced me that coaching really can help, that I plucked up my courage and more in hope than expectation, placed some of my precious remaining chips on six coaching sessions with Adrian Reith.

To be honest I was slightly disappointed at first. A part of me wanted a bit of snake oil and showmanship. I wanted the theatre of analysis and the authority of someone with degrees and doctorates. But there were no fancy consulting rooms, no dramatic claims. We talked in cafes and clubs and public places. There was no prescriptive party line telling me this is how it would be, this is what I should do. There was no clear plan of action.

There was just Adrian quietly asking me what I wanted to do with today’s session, or what did I want to do with that thought? ‘I don’t know, you tell me,’ I kept thinking’. ‘I’m new to this game, you’re the bloody expert, what do you think I should do?’

It was an irritating, difficult, but incredibly powerful question based on the assumption that I have all the answers inside me and my problem is that I just can’t get at them. It forced me to think things through and take responsibility for my conclusions.

But sometimes thought isn’t enough. When faced with difficult choices I can end up paralysed with indecision. So Adrian taught me a simple technique to cut though all the internal intellectual wrangling. He constantly suggested I follow my energy. If an idea energises you, you feel it physically, in my case in the stomach. No need to wonder whether a decision is right or whether you really want it. If your stomach rises, do it. If your stomach falls, don’t.

Armed with these techniques I was able to address the mess of thoughts in my head. It was a bit like going in with a plate of spaghetti. All Adrian did was help me straighten the strands. Again I found the exercise irritatingly basic but incredibly useful and powerful. It allowed me to take accurate stock of my situation and plan where I wanted to go.

The first few sessions were low key, they were difficult and energising. But I had still had no clear idea of where I was going. But after about our fourth session, something strange started happening. Following Adrian’s advice to ‘follow your gut’ I started writing for an environmental web site. All of a sudden my energy and purpose came flooding back. It became crystal clear to me for the first time that I really want to remain a journalist but that I would have to work very differently.

Now our sessions are over, the recession is still on, newspapers and magazines are still in sharp decline. The difference is that I am now a man with a plan. I have a destination and a route map to get there. I may have done most of the work myself but I couldn’t have done it, wouldn’t have done it without Adrian.

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This unedited article was written by a successful journalist client who I asked to reflect candidly on his experience of our coaching sessions. My thanks to him. He knows who he is. AR