We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Courtney A. Seard. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Courtney below.

Courtney, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.

I got my client through word-of-mouth. I had just become a certified NLP and hypnosis practitioner and coach and had explained to a friend the benefits and what you could expect from the coaching process, and had a friend say, “hey, I’d love to have those outcomes.” They signed up and became my first coaching client.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Courtney Seard. I am 48 years old. I’m an executive performance coach, strategic consultant, and facilitator. Growing up, I always wanted to be “in business.” I started my professional career as a teenager doing bookkeeping. From there, I worked at a bank as a teller, and then my first big job was at Fox Sports Chicago, where I worked as the assistant to the Director of Planning and Administration at Fox Sports Chicago. The role was an accounting operations-intensive role, and I loved it. A series of unexpected life turns led me to my current career path, and I have the privilege of doing what I love.

I help people get unstuck. I work with them to get from where they are to where they want to be, both personally and professionally. I help individuals unlock and unleash what is holding them back in their unconscious mind, and develop conscious strategies and practical step-by-step actions and techniques to enhance and improve their lives. What sets me apart from others is that I use conscious and unconscious coaching techniques and am not afraid to be uncomfortable and disliked.

I believe a good coach can work with individuals who are already at the top of their game and want to take it to the next level; they can push them to a level of discomfort and place most people haven’t been in their lives. A good coach can take them through the other side consistently with kindness, firmness, and a steady focus on knowing the outcome and not being shaken by each individual’s behavioral expression.

My ability to stay the course and see people on the other side, to see them as there as they are not yet, to see them fully actualized, is worth it. There is always a point when I am interviewing a prospective client where I let them know that there will be a point in our engagement that you hate me, and I’m OK with that because on the other side, you’re gonna love YOU, and to me, that’s worth more than a few moments of being uncomfortable.

One of the things I am most proud of is my resilience and tenacity. There have been many things in my life that I’ve been consistent in, yet I have not seen the results that I desired or didn’t see the whole fruit, the harvest, or the abundance that I desired when I wanted to see it, which was immediately. I learned that success is incremental, and it’s important to keep going and going, and continue to keep going. My clients or potential clients, see that in me, and know if you are looking for someone to guide you through to the next level, my goal is get you there.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

24 was a defining year for me. Earlier that year, my father passed away, and I was heading to talk therapy when I was hit by a car while riding my bicycle, and I sustained severe injuries. I was in physical therapy for over 3 years, suffered from chronic pain (I was on 13 different medications at one time, at one point), my digestive system was a mess, and I was incredibly depressed and angry. I felt trapped and that my life was spiraling.

At 26 years old, a doctor told me, “This is it.” I needed to accept the reality that I would be on medication probably for the rest of my adult life, and I just needed to accept it. There was something about how he was so dismissive and matter-of-fact in tone, that I realized that perhaps it was the right time for a switch to flip in me.

I began to search for alternative ways to heal, so I started with massage colonics, diet, and exercise. Then, I was recommended to try acupuncture and meditation, herbs, and Qi-gong. From there, it was suggested that I try hypnosis. I was intrigued, and I had to do a lot of unlearning. I grew up with a strict type of religious ideology that hypnosis and anything of that nature was “of the devil.” However, I was in so much pain for so long, and things were so bleak, that I was willing to try anything. I continued to pray to God, Source, and the Universe to help heal me and show me the way, and the more I tried alternative care, the better I felt. Once, I tried hypnosis and began to understand the power of my mind–the power of my unconscious mind to heal and change my reality. It sparked something inside of me that allowed me to not only take the necessary steps to heal my body but also change my life. It began to lead me to the current career path that I have now.

I say that that accident led me to my life‘s purpose and passion before being hit by that car, my dream when I was working towards it. I desired to be an attorney. I cannot imagine my life being anything other than what it is now as an executive performance coach, strategic consultant trainer of NLP and hypnosis, and speaker.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Yes, my coaching practice did begin as a side hustle. I was already working for myself in a completely different type of consultancy business. I did bookkeeping and virtual operations for small businesses, and it was a thriving practice–but I was unhappy. It led me to start another business entity (while still maintaining that practice) and I also began working part-time for an NLP training company, as a master coach, and volunteering as a training/coaching assistant during their trainings.

I knew that in order to be a world-class coach of NLP, you really need to immerse yourself into that world, and that’s what I did. While I was working with them part time, I was working in my booking/operations consultancy company, and I slowly started to pick up 1:1 coaching, and facilitation clients. I was very intentional on the type of clients that I wanted and how I wanted to attract them. My strategy was and has always been “slow burn”– I let the outcomes and feedback speak for itself and build a strong boutique referral/reputation-based business.

From there, I scaled my business. I knew that there was a certain amount of revenue that I needed to be successful to pay myself, my taxes, and my expenses. I did a lot of market research around pricing and was really strategic again around asking clients for referrals. It took me three years before I was able to fully step into my side hustle, coaching, consultancy business. I was able to grow this into a successful business because I had already worked for myself and I did not have the tolerance to not continue the lifestyle that I had worked hard to create. I knew the goals that I had set for myself and how I wanted to go about accomplishing those goals. There are inevitably going to be good and bad years when scaling a business in any industry–but I’ve realized that the more I’ve been in it, the more I’ve been able to understand and implement my learnings into my work, and that this will continue to be an ongoing cycle as I continue to grow and scale.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.courtneyseard.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtney-a-seard-b837aa9