We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Annette Pearson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Annette, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?

As a small business owner, the only way for me to build my business at the beginning was to lean into my community of friends, family and former colleagues. They know me best and can speak to my values, my talents, my capabilities and so much more. The people who know me best can speak to how I build and maintain relationships, understand and resolve issues and nurture individuals and teams. I rely heavily on the people closest to me not only to help spread the word about what I am creating but also to push me to build the best suite of services and the best experience possible for each and every client with whom I work.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I became a professional coach after coaching people I care about informally throughout my life.
My career path has traversed everything from sales, audience development, PR, product and project management to marketing. Not all of these jobs were the best fit – I would have benefitted from more technical knowledge in my product management role and my work in PR was limited by the industry I supported at the time. In some roles, I learned and grew on the job; while managing website audience development, I was on the forefront of web analytics, SEO, SEM and I loved using new, fast-growing technology.
Despite the prestige, after spending over a decade working in Tech in Silicon Valley, I wanted desperately to return to an environment where my work had real impact on a daily basis. Working for huge companies felt impersonal and I, like many of my coworkers, often felt underappreciated.
I knew many coaches who were thriving. I’d also benefitted from the power of professional coaching and knew that people were positively impacted by coaching quickly and regularly. Going through a coaching certification course proved that transformation could happen in one short session – and that the benefits of coaching would continue to grow as a coaching relationship evolved.
Coaching ambitious, intelligent, creative and passionate people is rewarding for me and as I grow my practice and coach individuals, groups, professional teams and communities, I see the benefits for each of them as well.
I am excited to continue to build a practice that supports people in identifying and articulating their vision for a future that they are excited to live.

How’d you meet your business partner?

As part of my coaching business, I co-founded Board of AdviseHERS by Light Her Way with Samantha Carroll. Samantha and I met long ago in college and despite not having staying in close touch, we reconnected through our deep commitment to serving our alumni community. Seeing what Samantha was offering as a coach and consultant to the Emory Alumni Community inspired me to reach out to catch up and during our very first conversation, we realized how much we shared when it came to our values, passions and goals. We decided very quickly to partner up to create a program for ambitious women to support their growing professional journeys and we haven’t looked back! The amazing thing about reconnecting is that both of us can see that even as we’ve grown our skillsets, experience and networks, who both of us are at the core hasn’t changed. We are both persistent, motivated, and ready to accept help when we need it.
We are a powerhouse team and I’m so excited to see what we can do the longer we work together.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

The only way to build a reputation as a coach is to serve each client as well as possible. I’ve built my reputation by showing up and being true to my values and coach training so that clients can share publicly how they’ve felt and been impacted by working with me. I also spend time actively connecting with other people in my industry, pushing myself to explore new ideas in the coaching field and then sharing what I’ve learned – both the facts and my perspectives so that anyone that engages with me knows who I am and what they can expect from me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.annetteblumpearson.com, https://lightherway.my.canva.site
• Instagram: @annettebpearsoncoach
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/annette-blum-pearson-leadership-coaching/ , https://www.linkedin.com/in/annetteblum

Image Credits

Sari Blum