I got my first paid writing gig when I was 12.

Which makes me sound like a super genius or something right?

Ha, I wish.

The truth is, I almost flunked essay writing when I was 10. My father, horrified that anyone carrying his DNA could bomb English writing, devised a program where my two younger sisters and I had to write 3 essays a week all summer or we couldn’t go out to play.

To his credit, he made it really interesting. We each had a scrapbook and we’d cut out images from magazines and create fictitious characters. We’d write reviews of our favourite bedtime stories and reports on family outings. My Dad would meet with us on the weekends and offer suggestions on structure, writing stronger headlines, using metaphors and more.

By the time that summer drew to an end, I realized I loved storytelling. Somehow, this thing that I thought I hated and sucked at was my calling. What?!

I was incredibly lucky that I had a coach very early in my life. #thanksdad

I guess that early transformation got me hooked not just on writing and storytelling, but on figuring out how to rewrite the unproductive stories that keep me from becoming my highest self.

I spent two decades working in the media (TV, radio, print and web) and learned how to pitch as a freelance journalist as well as internally when I had an idea for a show or concept.

Then I had my first baby and everything changed. I no longer cared to trade dollars for hours. I also had an incredibly powerful birth experience that woke me up to the hidden potential I seem to have left untapped. 

I like to joke that the Universe speaks to me through YouTube and Facebook ads. Well, those ads led me to purchase a course on making courses and in 2014, I launched my DIY PR program called Baby Got Booked, that had a 96% success rate. I “retired” my husband, Pat from his TV producer job and he started running operations for our company.

Then, right when I had my second baby in 2016, I entered a period of intense self doubt. 

I noticed that while almost everyone we worked with got serious media attention, only a small number of them had the kind of exponential business growth that we were all expecting. I was terrified that somehow I had sold my clients a bunch of snake oil!!

Unable to sleep at night (only partially because of my colicky little one), I did the only thing I could think to do. I put on my journalist hat and called up all my most successful clients (one of whom had added $12M to his bottomline in a single year that he credited me with!).
I interviewed them to within an inch of their lives to try and figure out what they knew that the rest of my clients (and frankly I) were missing. After all, we were only doing about $300K a year at the time.  

The first 3 interviews made me feel even more panicky. They were all so different from each other – different niches, different industries, different genders, different price points. Just DIFFERENT.

By the time I finished the 4th interview, I saw it! They all had certain things in common: a growth mindset, a premium product or service ($3500 and up), they had a proper sales and marketing system to capture leads and yes, then my PR stuff just opened the floodgates for them. Some were even using the media credibility I taught them to get to attract talent that was technically out of their league!

My mind spinning, I got to work trying to create a system that I could personally follow. I taught it 1-on-1 to some clients to make sure it was solid. And that’s the system that turned into Impact with Influence.

As you can see if you check out our testimonials page, clients got results. And this time I built a team and systems to support me and we managed to grow the business to $2M a year.

Then plot twist.

In 2020, after possibly the worst flu I’ve ever had in my life, I started to have the weirdest symptoms. I went from being this buff, athletic endurance runner (ate clean, trained 6 days a week, no booze ever, no processed sugar) to gaining 30lbs and barely being able to walk 3 blocks.

WTF?!

As someone who treated personal development like a religion, this felt like falling into the Upside Down. Nothing made sense. I spent THREE YEARS getting all manner of tests and throwing tens of thousands of dollars down my throat (and in the bin) via supplements and herbs. I saw medical specialists, naturopaths, energy healers and even a shaman.

No one could help me. Worse: no one could even tell me what was wrong or how I got here.

My identity as an athlete and a badass get-shit-done person actually actively worked against me during this phase. I was so sick and I was so confused as to what to do to get better because I literally couldn’t tell which habits helped and which ones didn’t.

I couldn’t, in good conscience, continue coaching people when I wasn’t sure if actions really did contribute logically to results any more. 

I made the devastating decision to shut down my company, fire my whole team and go on sabbatical. 

I was suicidal. I had no drive, no energy and for the first time in my life, I had no desire to work. I didn’t recognize my body and I didn’t recognize my mind.

I wanted very much to end it all. It would have been a great way to provide for my family since I had a large life insurance policy.

Luckily, writing saved my life. You could say I journaled myself back from the dead (and one day I hope to write a book about it and maybe even create a course around the process I used).

I still didn’t have the energy or drive to build a business so I supported Pat with Impact Clips – a done for you social media agency that he started while I was sick.

In the background, I dove into 2-3 books a week and gave myself a business education on steroids. I dissected the curriculum of Impact with Influence and looked at all the pieces that, despite the results it created, were missing.

Here’s what I realized: I had successfully taught people how to make money. What I hadn’t succeeded in teaching them was how to build a stable, functional business that didn’t depend on their energy. One that automated lead flow. And one that ran so smoothly that it was valuable enough to sell one day.

I have spent the last 18 months completely rewriting the program so that IWI 2.0 is basically everything I wish I’d known when I first realized I was committed to coaching and everything I learned as a business owner who made a LOT of mistakes running a 7 figure company.

I mean some basic but magical stuff like “how to vision”. I realized that even though I’d always identified as a visionary, I had fundamentally misunderstood what visioning is actually about: It’s NOT about having big ideas; it’s about CHOOSING which of your big ideas truly moves the needle and then innovating a path to make it real.

And financials. No one ever taught me what I was supposed to pay people as a percentage of top line revenue! I ruined a few good relationships along the way by overpaying people and then creating chaos when there wasn’t left over to fund growth.

Hiring. Firing. Culture. Retention. Customer lifetime value (LTV). Scalable fulfillment. Client results.These are all the monkeys you must tame if you want to have a business that runs itself.

I realized that after investing well over half a million dollars cumulatively in training and mentorship, no one had taught me these fundamentals. In fact, most coaching for coaches tends to focus on just the marketing side of things. Which is what I had emulated when I created the first version of IWI.

As usual, I created this next version for myself. I’m always Client Zero. And this time, as someone who still suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), I have no energy or time to waste. Systems and team are absolutely CRUCIAL to sustained success.

It’s funny. I wanted to run ultra marathons to learn how to access the gears that keep you in the game when you most want to quit. I found what I wanted – only the endurance race ended up being chronic illness. Not as glamorous and you get a big fat bill instead of a shiny medal at the end. But I wouldn’t change a thing. Because I found the gear.

I came back from the dead to relaunch this company so I could help more coaches who truly want to make a difference do that which growing into the Profit Prophets they have always wanted to be.

I’m so happy you found me and I’m excited to explore whether we can help.