Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Taylor Miller-Goulait. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Taylor, appreciate you joining us today. We believe kindness is contagious and so we’d love for you to share with us and our audience about the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

The kindest thing that anyone has done for me was to provide me with unlikely opportunities. And those opportunities led me to do the things I truly love and am passionate about, which is helping people grow.

As a kid, I was not a great student. I barely graduated high school, and have a limited college education because I prioritized working over schooling. At the age of 18, while working in a retail store in the mall, I was given the unexpected opportunity to be a leader at that store. I was excited, initially, because of the pay increase (of course!) But as I continued growing in the role as a leader, I fell in love with my capacity to help people develop.

I loved teaching employees about the product and the company, I was always excited to train new employees, and I enjoyed offering best practices to those who were just starting out in retail. I loved helping solve problems to create a better client experience. I learned that I loved leadership!

After 10 years in retail management, I did become a bit burnt out (as most retail managers do) and I decided to get my start in a corporate office environment to have a more structured schedule, and one thing I desired more than anything…Holidays and weekends off!

After about 6 months in my entry-level corporate role, I was already training new employees, and had been asked to be a leader on my team. I wasn’t entirely sure that was the role I wanted to lead in, but I knew I loved training people, and I knew I loved leadership. I shared this with my direct leader at the time, and he knew of a position that was open on the “Leadership Development Team.”

I had never heard of such a thing! I always thought all leaders were just winging it, like I had been. But I applied, and was accepted onto the team. That new role opened a multitude of doors for me, allowing me to build new skillsets, learn new perspectives, and discover my real passion, which is developing emotionally intelligent, authentic leaders who create inclusive, safe, and engaged workspaces.

These opportunities gave me the hands-on experience and knowledge I needed to take on my most challenging role yet – Business owner.

Taylor, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

After about five years in corporate Leadership Development, and a pandemic that offered much time to reflect and think about what I really want to do with my career, I partnered with a dear friend and (at the time) co-worker of mine, Erika Rivera, to talk about starting a Leadership Development company on our own.

Post-pandemic, we were both itching to get out and meet people and talk ‘shop’ with leaders inside and outside of our current company. So we started attending different networking events, met local leaders and professionals, and quickly learned that what we were doing within our Leadership Development Team was a luxury not many companies had available to them.

Everyone we spoke with saw the need for it, and the positive impact it had, but very few (if any) had ever actually received leadership training, or had even heard of it being available outside of the executive level.

And with that, Erika and I knew…We could take this idea of, essentially, a ‘fractional’ leadership development team, and offer it to smaller and mid-size companies, and that’s when we decided to start Monarch Coaching.

The largest issue organizations are facing these days is employee engagement and company culture. Disengagement is at an all-time high, and company culture is at an all-time low. At Monarch Coaching, we offer solutions to this ‘company culture crisis.’ We transform these cultures from the top-down through effective leadership development.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

As a first-time business owner, the toughest thing to ‘unlearn’ was that just because I was an expert in company culture and leadership development, did not mean I was going to be an ‘expert’ at owning a leadership development business. There was (and still is) a lot for me to learn.

I knew that to own a company it meant I had to create the product and deliver it, but I didn’t realize how much time and effort has to go into everything else to make that happen. Marketing, branding, sales strategy, ideal client profiles, networking, partnerships, budgeting, operations, documentation, business planning…the list goes on and on!

Over time, what I did learn from this struggle, was that I can’t know everything, and I can’t do everything. And surrounding myself with people I can learn from is priceless. Mentors who have been entrepreneurs, or who have bought or sold businesses have been so monumental in the growth of not just our business, but of my knowledge and skills as a business owner.

I learned that leaning on others was necessary to get to the next level. Entrepreneurship is not something we can do alone, even if you have a business partner like myself. Your business partner offers some perspective and support, but when you’re both growing business owners, you still need to look outside yourselves for transformational support.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Adaptability and flexibility is the name of the game when it comes to owning a business. You have to learn to “throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.” Take risks, fail, adjust, and take more risks until something works.

When we began Monarch Coaching, we had in mind that we would be offering leadership coaching as our sole service. As we began to research and network, we learned that companies were really interested in actual leadership trainings and workshops for their leaders, and even team-building for their employees.

So our first pivot was to begin developing a few in-person workshops and team-building activities as additional services. Then, as we delivered some of these workshops, our clients began sharing with us that they would like to have online, recorded options, so they could easily offer the same training content to their newer employees as they continued to hire.

So our second pivot was to develop online courses. Now, Erika and I both have backgrounds in Instructional Design and Course Creation, so this was absolutely in our wheelhouse, but wasn’t at all what we thought we’d be getting into.

So after about 18 months of product development, testing, receiving feedback and, of course, more pivoting…we had launched our online Monarch Leadership Program. A 6 month online program that includes eleven interactive, self-paced courses that are accompanied by one-on-one and group coaching sessions.

Although we hadn’t quite expected to become so invested in product development, this pivot has helped us create a more scalable and sustainable business model that reaches far past our local community, and has even landed us international clients as well. Ones we may have never been connected with, had we still just been solely leadership coaching, or in-person workshops.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.monarchcoachingco.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/monarchcoachingco/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/monarch-coaching-co/?viewAsMember=true
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheLeadHerLounge

Image Credits

Sole photo credit to Brett Mountain Photography; Branded images photo credit to Lauren Giuliani