Small But Mighty Episode 18: Carole Blackburn on helping women feel empowered and supported

Carole Blackburn is a Certified Life and Wellness Coach based in Ottawa, Ontario. Her programs, coaching and workshops help women struggling to overcome challenging life situations feel supported and empowered. Carole’s personal journey through major life transitions has not only transformed the way she views life, but also fuels her work to help other women live their best lives. She joins me on the podcast today to discuss what a life coach is, how they help people, and what makes a good coach-client relationship.

If you would like to learn more about how Carole Blackburn can help you or someone you know with their life journey, connect with her on her website or follow her on social media, including Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Full episode transcript:

Karen Wilson: Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining me on the Small But Mighty Biz Stories podcast. I am excited to introduce you to Carole Blackburn today. Carole is a Certified Life and Wellness Coach based in Ottawa, Ontario. I've just come to know Carole a little bit over the past year and I have to say that she's one of those people who has a smile that just lights up the world around her. It's really infectious and I can imagine it's a real comfort to clients. Carole, thank you for being my guest today. Please tell everyone about you and what your business is.

Carole Blackburn: Thank you so much, Karen. I'm happy to be with you today. My name is Carole. I am a personal life and wellness coach, as well as a speaker. I do one-on-one coaching with clients. I also run group sessions and I also run events and workshops, everything to help empower women. That's my niche, is women, to help them clear the way to step into the life that they truly want for themselves in all areas and aspects of who they are, the roles that they play, and to really show up authentically and grow into the woman that they desire to be. That's the type of work that I love doing.

Karen: That's awesome. You have a page on your website and it's called My Journey and you're very open with your story, do you want to share a little bit about what led you into this work that you're doing?

Carole: Yes, absolutely. In my journey, my own personal experience, I had gone through major life transitions. A broken-down marriage which quickly escalated to a divorce, and then becoming a single mom to two young kids very quickly, and then again having to get myself back into the workforce, everything from bankruptcy to home foreclosure, you name it, I've went through it all. It was in a relatively short period of time. Over the span of about two years, all of the house of cards came crashing down.

Through that, I found myself to be in a place to recognize that I had a choice. I could either sink with the ship or I could do something about turning my life around and looking back, I dove deep interpersonal growth, deep into self-exploration, and really did a lot of hard work on my own to rebuild my life. Not just the to-dos, get a job, find a house, do all that stuff, but really to embrace the woman that was burning inside of me.

Through all of that work, it eventually got me to the place where I decided I wanted to help other people, other women through, not necessarily the same challenges, but it's in that growth process of being open enough to want to rediscover who they are.

Karen: Well and I was thinking as I read it that it's something that as a client, if I was coming in and reading through your website and seeing that you've actually been through your own personal challenges and there's an empathy there, even if the challenges are different and have a different impact, there's an empathy there that someone who appears to have the ubiquitous or the so-called perfect life that doesn't really exist wouldn't necessarily have it-- It gives you this edge where you can relate to some of the challenges that people are going through. I'm sure that's a real comfort to clients who are coming in and who are facing those things. You get comments about that?

Carole: All the time. Especially when people are searching for a life coach and they come across my website, I do get quite a few comments that they felt very compelled. They felt heard, and they felt like I was relatable, and much to what you said, it doesn't necessarily have to be the same challenges, but I find that women, especially, we struggle in silence. We take on the expectations of society, the expectations of our families, and we quiet ourselves. We live in this place of uncertainty and a place where we've discovered that we don't know who we are anymore and we're lost in this beautiful world around us.

It's not anyone's fault, I was the same way, silenced. I felt like I lost my power, I lost the person who I was. Feeling lost in your own life, regardless of the situation, is the most disempowering and hard turmoil to go through. The struggle is so real and it's rampant, but people are afraid to talk about it.

Karen: One of the things that I read on your site that I really love and I think it's a bold statement, but you say, every woman deserves to live an enriched, fulfilled, and robust life full of joy and happiness. I was reminded, I was watching a series of videos months ago, they were talking about how, as women, we've all come up in a world where men are not just able to expand themselves, they're encouraged to expand themselves. Whereas women tend to contract and we are encouraged to contract. It's really hard to have that enriched, fulfilled, robust, full life if you are constantly diminishing yourself.

All of it's to, as you were saying, to meet those societal expectations, so has that been pretty universal as a challenge with your clients and how do you address it?

Carole: It does seem to be quite a common theme because people don't realize just how long it's taken to reach the point that they're at. It's been developing over years and years. When there is this, when people struggle just by trying to understand who they are and how they fit into the world and their purpose, happiness diminishes, everything diminishes, your confidence, your dignity even. It's like you, women, who especially give so much; they give a lot of who they are. They give up a lot of who they are and they are more inclined to put their needs on the back burner to ensure that everybody else is well taken care of and that's not a fault.

I believe that we innately have that ability to nurture those around us, but where I think we've lost the mark is that we have lost the ability, or we have forgotten how to nurture ourselves first and step into that so that we can be healthy emotionally, mentally, physically, in order to take care of everybody around us and the responsibilities that we have. It's not like it happens overnight. It happens over the years and years and years, and it's like we slowly get chipped away. What once used to ignite us and was a fire inside of us, even as a young girl or a young teenager and even as a young adult, sometimes we've diminished that fire and it gets lost.

My role is to help uncover that fire because it's still there. I believe it's still there as long as somebody is willing to want to find it again.

Karen: I love that. It's interesting because we were talking a little bit before we started recording, life coaching in general, I sometimes have these conversations with people and they don't really seem to fully understand what it is. I worked with a life coach years ago and it was a great experience. I think one of the things that was so valuable about it was just that help in thinking about things I hadn't really thought of before. Really digging deep into what you really want out of life, and not just what you really want, but how to actually get it.

What are some of the things that you're doing with your clients that are helping them to discover those deep desires that maybe they didn't even realize they had?

Carole: Well, I give my clients the space just to be and say and feel in a way that they are heard and understood and supported. Our calls, our sessions together, they're unbiased. I don't have an opinion about how somebody should live their life. My role is to guide them to unveil all those answers on their own that is already in them. I don't tell people what to do, I challenge people to think a little bit deeper, and to hold them accountable to the things that they really want to do for themselves.

Coaching is very much a forward-thinking process, it's planning for your future, we're not necessarily digging into the past to understand why certain things happened. That is a whole other profession and I admire psychologists, counselors, therapists, that is their deep work. For me, where I help people is that I empower them to have the freedom and the ability to explore and to open up through exercise through conversation and what I mean exercises like resources, through different tools that I suggest, and everybody is different and unique.

What I offer clients is very much catered to where they are and to empower them to feel confident that they can continue to take the next step and the next step until they really feel like they've made such an impact on their lives, and the world that belongs to them.

Karen: Yes, another thing that you talk about is the emphasis of clients having their own personal definition of success, which I'm a huge believer that success can take so many different forms and look very different from one person to another. What are some of the ways that people define success?

Carole: That is a great question because it is different right across the board. No two people will ever define it the same way. Success for one person could be just enhancing their health, and that gives them the boost and the confidence to show up in other areas authentically. Everything in life, regardless if it's business, career, relationships, health, raising children, regardless of what it is, everything is intertwined very closely. When you're struggling in one area, it's going to impact everything else.

My goal, my hope for my clients is that we're able to elevate them to a place where that ripple effect of success and their version of success is felt throughout their entire lives and like I said, it will impact everything. People come to me with different needs but what I tell them is this one area that we're talking about is going to expand even further, so get ready. It's not just this one thing that we're identifying it's going to open up the floodgates, which is exciting and it's nerve-wracking at the same time but I do it in a very step-by-step process, I don't like to overwhelm people either.

Karen: Yes. This is probably a hard question to answer because it could be different for everyone. What are some of the things that make someone ready for help like yours? Who needs a life coach?

Carole: Such a good question seriously. Women who approached me often and they say I really appreciate the work you do and what you do, but I just don't feel like I'm ready yet to hire a coach, regardless of who it is. There is a couple of things that I can identify in that is that first and foremost, you have to be willing to do the work, and some people are not yet ready to dig in and that's okay. I do believe at some point they will be but it's really a challenge to identify that.

Karen: It's a very particular type of work.

Carole: Yes. It is. Another challenge is that there's a lot of fear that holds people back and fear can show up in many different forms. There is shame and guilt, they feel that I'm unpacking a lot of stuff that I have lived with, in turmoil that have anchored me down and I'm afraid of how that's all going to unfold. Getting to the second part of your question is, I believe everyone should work with a life coach. As long as they feel like they are willing to really explore the options that they have in front of them to really step into their potential.

For some people, that's scary and that's okay, but for other people, it's more curiosity, and for others they're like, I want to dive in. I'm tired of living like this, I'm spinning my wheels, I'm stuck, I'm in a rut and I need help. It's in that help where you take this flower that has been dormant and it truly beautifully blossoms right in front of my eyes. The effects of that is just, it's mind-blowing. It's quite an honor to be in that space.

Karen: I had a recent experience personally within my business where I couldn't move forward on something. I told a couple of different people, I'm like, I can't figure out if it's fear or if I just wasn't yet- if the things were all clicked into place. Even with trying to figure out whether it was fear, I was going, is it fear of failure or fear of success? I wanted to actually dig into that idea of fear of success because I don't know if everyone actually believes that's a thing. How do you view that and what are some of the things that make us fear that kind of success?

Carole: I do believe fear of success is very real, but we often get it confused with failure. Fear of success is, what if I can't live up to what I'm putting myself out there to do? What if I can't live up to what I'm vocalizing that I say I'm going to do or that I have in my heart that I want to do. We diminish ourselves, we play small. That success that is really something that is a desire, we're quieting the desire and we're allowing the inner critic to tell us why we shouldn't step out of the comfort zone.

You're safe here. You're safe in this nice little bubble that you've created for yourself. If you do more or try more, oh, boy, you might fail, but really, it's fear. That's why the confusion sits in between success and failure, in my opinion. I face that too, I still face those challenges and I have coaches that help guide me through that. It is a real thing.

Karen: I ultimately decided that in the situation I was in, it was procrastination where my brain was working through how to make it all work and then everything clicked into place and I started moving forward, but for a while there I was, like, is fear the reason? What's going on here?

Carole: Trust me, you're not alone…What's happening?

Karen: Because I do definitely believe that fear of success is a thing and it's a strange thing to fear and yet it's really common, especially amongst in the areas we hang out with entrepreneurs. It's especially common because we want to succeed but we also don't want to flop or not measure up in some way to what we have in mind.

Carole: Absolutely, and our mind plays tricks on us sometimes, right? It's like, well, if this dream and vision that I have is something that I've been wanting for so long, and then we have this polar effect of no, if you do this, there's a thousand things that could happen. Well, we can't predict really what's going to happen and sometimes we just have to try before we think we're ready to try and that's a good.

Karen: Totally. What are some of the reasons that your clients, are there catalysts that drive people to look for a coach or do people tend to just say, okay, I'm ready, let's do this?

Carole: There's a bit of both. I think that it's a lot of people who reach out, they're struggling without understanding what the struggle is. What I mean by that is that everything feels chaotic. Everything feels overwhelming and just there's no rhyme or reason. Just being heard, like when I do discovery calls with someone, they start to talk and suddenly, the one thing, like I said, that they thought they were struggling with, we can probably pick up and identify three or four things.

Some people feel like I'm ready, but I'm really not sure for what and other people are very much like, I'm just confused and I'm stuck and I'm tired of feeling this way. I'm tired of living day in and day out exhausted, not just physically but emotionally and mentally exhausted because nothing is changing. That's probably one of the biggest reasons that people will reach out is that they're just tired, they're exhausted and they just need help.

Other people I'll have to say are very motivated to go further. They want to take some really fantastic ideas and goals that they have for themselves and they want to turn it into an action plan. They want to be held accountable and work with someone to really help them push through and do the things that they have set out to do for themselves. I have clients on both sides of the spectrum. I have one particular client that I'm working with right now, she's like, these are the things that I want to work on. She's very focused, very determined. She's like, but I know I can't do this alone.

Karen: That's awesome.

Carole: I need someone to help me to get through the other side because I know there's something bigger waiting for me. It really is a personal journey and one that is so unique and beautiful all at the same time.

Karen: It must be so interesting too. You get a lot of different energies from people based on what their needs are and I can see how it would be really exhilarating to work with someone who's so driven to get to something they really want.

Carole: Yes, it is. It's just, like I said, it's such an honor to spend time in that space with them. My clients have been amazing over the years and even the ones who joined me for a workshop or a talk or something, you see the same people showing up and it's like, yes, we build this relationship and this growth together. I get a lot out of it too. I get inspired. I get like, wow, look at how she's really owning this thing that she wants to do. I get excited, but there's also the compassion side of things as well that people need that love and compassion right where they are, and to have the space to release any of the baggage that we carry with us and to again, just to get that sense of renewal.

Karen: Nice. If someone was looking to hire a coach, how important is fit when it comes to making that decision; share your thoughts.

Carole: It so important to find the right person who's going to coach you and be your partner through that journey because not all coaches and not all clients are meant to be together. Especially, there's a lot of different coaches out there and everybody has their own way of coaching and their own experiences that they bring to the table. Do your research, make sure that you're talking to different coaches, and make sure that you feel like you can connect with that person enough that you can start to build that relationship on trust, and to know that they are the right fit for your personality.

If a coach is also doing their job properly, they are also interviewing potential clients as well because we need to, I need to ensure that I'm the right fit for that person. I am not going to just hire anybody if I feel like I am not the person that they need, or I am not the type of help that they should be going after. It's a two-way thing. Like I said, do your research, but on the other side of it, coaches should have a good system of qualifying clients and then inviting them if it's the right opportunity.

Karen: That makes a lot of sense because your clients being successful makes you successful at what you're doing. You don't want to work with somebody where the fit being off is going to impede their progress.

Carole: Yes. I've gone through it, especially in the first two years of my business I would say. I knew the type of client I wanted to work with, but I really wasn't sure or I was exploring different people that I could work with. I think that is a trial and error that we go through as entrepreneurs. We really don't know the essence of the work that we want to do until we work with people that may not be aligned with who we are and we find the people who are aligned with who we are.

I did have some clients that it didn't work out quite as well. There was success, but with refinement and even getting clear on who I want to serve has brought me to a place where I can better identify with those women. I do have male clients as well, but with those people whom I feel like I can completely step in and be of service to them as well.

Karen: That's great. What do you think is the most important way to be when you're going into a coaching situation? Open mind, open heart? What would you advise for someone who's going into a coaching relationship? What would you advise them to do or prepare?

Carole: Definitely keep an open mind. I believe the open heart will come over getting to know your coach better. That's not something that we can completely be 100% ready to do because the relationship has to build, the trust has to be formed, the bond needs to happen. We need to ensure that if someone is looking to keep an open mind and to be ready for change, even if you don't know exactly what that is just yet.

I always tell people, life is a journey and journey doesn't end until we die. We are always evolving, always changing, always moving, experience, life, everything that comes into play really affects how we see ourselves going forward. Some people are just, they're okay with how things are and they feel good, and that's fine, but others who are looking for that extra guidance and support and insight, perspective is everything.

That's another thing that I think is really important for people to understand is that you've got to be willing to hear outside perspective. Might be a completely different way of thinking, a way to view a situation, there are so many good nuggets and gems that come out of it that it's as long as someone is willing to receive that, is really important as well when looking for a coach.

Karen: Yes. I can tell you're really, really passionate about your business and what you do. What is it you enjoy the most about the work you do and the impact that you have on your clients?

Carole: I love watching my clients really find those hidden gems inside of them, those breakthrough moments. The consistency in doing something that they never thought they had the ability to do, changing habits, adjusting their lifestyle so that they could fit in and be such an important role for themselves and enjoy everything else that comes alongside their everyday lives. Just because you work with a coach, it doesn't mean you're going to quit your job, you're going to leave your spouse, it doesn't mean any of that. It just means that you're just going to arrive to that place where you are so engaged and so present.

I love watching people sort of find that, they reach that. Regardless of whatever it is, they find the ability to open up their self-worth and really shine through in their true voice. That to me is the best, and just journeying with people in the valleys. We talk about the peaks and all the great things that can happen, but there are valleys that we hit and there could be a setback that could happen in the coaching process, but overcoming those challenges speeds up a lot quicker when you work with a coach because you're not sitting and festering and wondering, and doing all these things by yourself. You have someone that you can count on to say, hey, I'm struggling right now and I need help.

Karen: Absolutely. I wanted to talk with you about how you promote your business. What are some of the things that you do that you enjoy about putting yourself out there and marketing to the world what you can do?

Carole: Oh, marketing, such a love-hate relationship.

I think the best way that I've been able to reach people is through conversations, videos, showing up at events, speaking engagements, being live and present. Because we are so inundated with so much information online that, just an Instagram post is going to get lost in seconds. I do believe that social media has to play a strong role in growing my business because I need to show up, I need to be there in different platforms, but I've honed it down into the platforms that I feel like I get the most engagement. Having a website that I continue to develop and build for added resources, blog posts, whatever I can give people so that they have a little bit more to work with on their own before--

Like some people I know may have been following me for a little while, but they may not show up and say, "Hey, I'm ready," for a couple of years, a few years. That's okay. I want to continue to serve people in a way that they don't have to be a one-on-one client right off the bat. Sometimes they just little bit of taste, they need to see and understand. Ensuring that my presence online, especially with a website that continues to develop with me, and then being present, especially on Facebook.

I have a Facebook group as well for women only, which is a really safe community and it's just empowering. We talk about things and I just want that to be a space where someone could come in and just get to be felt like they're a part of something, especially in this crazy world that we live in now. Marketing for me has been an ongoing development. I don't think I'll ever get to figure it out, but someday-I will.

Karen: You actually have very much the right idea of serving people, even if they don't actually show up on a client list, and there is that long, to say long game kind of cheapens it, but it's a long-term process because you're building a relationship without sometimes actually knowing that you are. Because they're paying attention to what you're saying and then they're exploring all of the resources that you put out there that are freely available.

Then as you were saying earlier, they may not have an open heart in the beginning when they work with you, but as that one-on-one relationship grows, it develops that way but you're further ahead because they've been following you in the beginning of that working relationships. It's a really good foundation that you have set for yourself that way.

Carole: Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. Like anything, marketing or how I get myself out there, it doesn't stay the same. I have to evolve. The more that I dive deeper into my message, the more my marketing and how I'm promoting myself, and even the resources that I'm freely giving will change. It will always change and grow and develop, and I would be foolish to think that it would never because as a coach, as a speaker, and as an entrepreneur, we're always growing and evolving and changing. Everything has to shift and move with it, so it's always an open game.

Karen: Well, and your expertise evolves, and just your perspective on things can evolve, and all of that shows up in how you talk about your business and promote it and it's good that we stay open to that and aware of the changes as they happen. Carole, how can people connect with you and find you out there?

Carole: Well, I'm pretty much everywhere. Visiting my website, of course. Carole Blackburn, life coach, you can Google me that way, or my website is CaroleBlackburn-lifecoach.com. I'm on Instagram, @CaroleBlackburn.lifecoach. You can use that. Also, on Facebook, Carole Blackburn, Life and Wellness Coach, recently started a Pinterest site as well. I'm all over the place. I want to reach people wherever they are, or people can email me directly as well. All of that information is on my website.

Karen: Fantastic. Well, I will make sure that the links to all of your social and website URLs get into the show notes so that everyone can easily find you and connect with you.

Carole: I appreciate that. Thank you.

Karen: Thank you so much for joining me today, Carole. It was great having you on.

Carole: Thank you. Appreciate being here. It was a great conversation.