Director - Global Business Services,Proctor & Gamble
I was introduced to Katy after suffering from burnout in my corporate job of almost 20 years.
Although on paper I had a successful career - climbing the ladder to Director level, traveling the world working on exciting projects and gaining kudos as a great manager and leader of others - the reality was somewhat different. I wasn’t sleeping, regularly crying on the way to and from work and was unable to switch off and fully enjoy time away from work. I didn’t know it before, but I was quite unwell.
With Katy’s coaching I reconnected with myself, my values and my ambitions. Katy helped me realise that I had completely steered away from the things that I was passionate about in favour of things I felt I ‘should’ be doing or that the company needed me to do. I had convinced myself I should be grateful for the success and position I’d found myself in, instead of seeking what I deserved and desired.
Katy talked me through a range of tools and techniques which could be adapted and used in all walks of life, not just work. Once practiced and mastered, they shifted my mindset, relationships and experiences - in work and outside of work.
With a renewed sense of purpose and drive, I listened back to a summary of how I’d presented in our first meeting a few months earlier - it shocked me completely. I didn’t recognise that version of myself anymore and I certainly didn’t want to be her!
I can honestly say that Katy’s coaching has been nothing sort of life changing, and worth every minute of time spent and every penny invested.
If you’re thinking about working with Katy just do it; your life will never be the same again!
Commercial and Operational Leader and Abstract Artist
Stopping was never something I would have considered, until it was forced upon me.
For years I have worked in leadership roles, driving commercial growth and operational efficiencies, primarily within the global retail space; building brands from the ground up, whilst living and working in international markets. More recently, since moving back to the UK, I have supported the scaling growth of various small medium enterprises and two tech start-ups. At the end of last year, I found myself made redundant.
I would have described my career as bold, creative, ambitious, brave, empowering, rewarding, and extraordinary, yet I was not feeling any of the above, in fact quite the opposite, until I met Katy.
When we met for my initial consultation, I described my situation as a “roundabout” I recognised the path I was on was the wrong one and I needed to urgently find a new way forward, yet I had no idea which road would bring me the right result. I had friends, family and colleagues all making suggestions about what I should do next, yet still I felt so terribly stuck and unsure, with little in the way of motivation, imagination, or drive.
Katy quickly recognised that the two biggest questions were how I ended up here and what did I really mean by the right result?
And so, we began…
Katy brought an immediate sense of calm into my life from the structure and leadership she brought to our coaching. I no longer needed to take the lead; it was my time to follow, and what a wonderful feeling that was. I really looked forward to our sessions as I felt instant transformation. Katy’s questions uncovered key issues and as she repeated back what she heard, my thinking was challenged and in turn my future thoughts. I can’t emphasise how instant the positive impact was. I started showing up differently during the first session and created different outcomes the same day which felt like stress just melting away.
For much of my life and career, I have taken on the fixer role and yet here I was unable to fix my own problems. Katy uncovered a much deeper understanding of my fixing motivation, and in turn steered me in a way that let me create my own boundaries that sat true to my values. This freed me from the feeling of overwhelm. The immediate outcome was (and continues to be) life changing.
When my professional life already felt tough enough, I was faced with challenges from two teenage boys followed by a cancer diagnosis for my mother. There seemed to be a pattern of loss unfolding in my life, from losing my job, my children changing from boys to men and gradually losing my mother to cancer. I had reached a stage in my life and career where I no longer found fun or felt excited by life. I lacked hope for the future and could not understand why. In all this turmoil, Katy made sense. She helped me find peace and acceptance in the word ‘stop’. For the first time in my life ‘stop’ switched from a must not, to a must do and I gave myself permission to rest.
Sure, I had a lot on my plate, but Katy made me realise I could change the impact of what was happening. She taught me to reposition my thinking which in turn improved my actions. I found myself questioning my why for aspects of life that left me drained and unfulfilled. What would I prefer to do? The result was astounding, after 30 years I returned to my true love of abstract art, pattern and design. I am now exhibiting a full collection of acrylic abstracts at Manchester Art Fair next year. I have rediscovered my love for life and for the first time in 16 years my husband and I have attended concerts together and danced like we are twenty years old again.
Katy helped me realise I needed to stop, in order, to move forward in the right direction for me. I have stepped off that roundabout, and I am in a place I could not have imagined 6 months ago. I paint, I dance with my sons, I sing in the car, and I feel alive again. The painting has taught me that life is a series of layers, and some days we create beautiful layers filled with colour and joy, other days, they make no sense at all and look awful, but we keep building layer by layer and eventually we reach a moment where we shine and can hang on the wall loud and proud.
When everything around me felt it couldn’t get any worse, I took the decision to invest in ME. The sessions with Katy have been liberating and life enhancing. She taught me four fundamentals that I now live by; they have changed everything for the better. Working with Katy is the greatest investment you can ever make. If you are thinking about it just go ahead and do it. Your future self will thank you!
Assistant Professor and Senior Lecturer in Interior Architecture, Northumbria University
Coming from a creative academic discipline, my work has always revolved around vision, spatial intelligence, and the ability to imagine beyond what already exists. Ironically, when it came to my own career, I wasn’t applying that same creative thinking to myself. I was leading programmes, shaping student experiences, and contributing at a high level, yet still hesitating to step into senior leadership.
As a Programme Leader and working parent balancing substantial academic responsibilities, I reached a point where advancing my career required a more strategic, structured approach. I wanted to elevate my professional impact without compromising my creative practice, academic agenda, or family life.
Engaging with Katy provided precisely the right level of support.
She immediately tapped into my creative background. Instead of generic leadership models, she worked with the way I think: visually, conceptually, intuitively. Our sessions felt like a design studio for my professional identity; a place where I could deconstruct old structures, challenge limitations, and redesign a more intentional version of myself. Her methods are disciplined, tailored, and intellectually engaging. She quickly understood the nuances of working with a creative academic and adapted her approach to suit both the analytical and imaginative dimensions of my work. Each session was efficient, well-structured, and centred on practical, immediately applicable tools.
One of the most valuable aspects of our work was reframing traits I had previously viewed as challenges. As someone with a strong perfectionist drive, Katy helped me harness it as a professional asset rather than something to suppress. Instead of diluting it, she showed me how to channel it strategically: refining standards, accelerating outputs, and elevating the quality of my leadership without letting it become a barrier to progress.
What sets Katy apart is her ability to combine empathy with sharp, uncompromising insight. She challenges you with precision, gets straight to the blueprint of who you are, and creates a space where high achievers can actually stretch.
Over the course of Katy’s coaching, the combination of targeted exercises, strategic frameworks, and consistent accountability supported significant professional momentum. During this period, I secured a senior leadership role, was appointed as a trustee of a national learned society, achieved senior recognition within the higher education sector, and advanced several pedagogical and research initiatives that I would have previously sidelined. Katy’s coaching contributed directly to this acceleration by strengthening my focus, refining my decision-making, and enabling me to work with greater intent and confidence.
Katy is not a coach for people who wish to feel better. She’s a coach for people who want to become better, professionals operating at an advanced level, who expect a high-calibre, results-driven coaching experience. For those seeking to enhance their leadership capacity with structure, precision, and measurable impact, I can recommend Katy without hesitation.
For high-achievers with a creative spark, she is exceptional.
When I first met Michael, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to work on, but I’m a big believer in having a performance coach alongside me to help me grow. Through the initial consultation, we identified what was and wasn’t working in my life and decided to create an action plan to make the change.
The key issue I uncovered was the need for balance in my life. As a self-made entrepreneur, I had a hard focus on work. When I did Michael’s life scores exercise, I found that my fulfilment in work areas was very high, but in areas such as family, friends, and relationships, I had scored very low. I uncovered that my rigorous focus on work cost me my personal life. Ultimately, this led to an overall lack of fulfilment.
I first worked with Michael back in 2011, at the start of his coaching career. Now, seven years later, we’ve both grown to new heights. The experience of working with him now is absolutely phenomenal. The most important thing for me when choosing a coach is finding someone who has achieved the results I want in my life. So, when I was clear about wanting to focus on my relationships, I saw that Michael had the results I was looking for already and was ready to work with him again.
The best thing about working with Michael is his honesty and direct feedback. No matter how candid and direct my friends may be, there is nothing like having someone in your life whose job is to focus on you and your life exclusively, without any hidden agendas. That was invaluable and transformative. I gained a stronger sense of self, deeper confidence and better awareness of myself. By working on the areas that weren’t working, I soon felt more stable, whole and complete, and these changes positively influenced all other areas of my life.
From the first moment with Michael, I felt support, relief, and empowerment. Even if nothing changed in a session, the mindset shifts were amazing. In terms of actual change in my life, it took four weeks to see results because I had to take action to improve my relationships, like making time to visit my parents, organising social events, and arranging dates, all of which take time to happen.
The most unexpected result was that I got myself a girlfriend! To be absolutely clear, that was not my objective.
Being a businessman, I always think of what would be the best use of my capital. It is easy to analyse with data and metrics, but numbers do not apply to your relationships and personal life. I decided to put that thinking aside and focus on my happiness. Having that money in the bank doesn’t improve my life, but putting it into my happiness makes a difference, so I invested in Michael and myself. It was completely worth every penny.
Michael is very direct - for some, it may be very confronting, but because I’m pretty bold myself, I need someone strong. He has the strength of character, the insight and the analytical ability to cut through the bullshit, see when you’re just talking but not really feeling it, and pull you up when you’re making excuses.
He is someone who aims to be the best. He’s on a mission. He’s driven and passionate and will always get the outcome he’s aiming for - nothing will get in the way. Having someone like that on your side, working towards your outcome, is the best thing you can do. He’s someone who really gets the most out of life.
If you want to identify areas of your life that aren’t serving you and feel empowered to take your life to the next level, then Michael is absolutely the guy for the job. He won't give you the answers, but he will help you find your own answers, and that is freedom.
