Community Highlights: Meet Lois Frankel of Corporate Coaching International

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lois Frankel.

Hi, Lois. You’ve been an entrepreneur for a lot of years. What is one of the most important lessons that you’ve learned?
I’ve learned over the years that our lives aren’t linear and that if we focus too much on a life “plan” then we miss what’s on the periphery that could far exceed what’s in the plan. From the time I was a teenager, I knew I wanted to be a psychotherapist. So, I got a Bachelor’s degree in psychology, a master’s degree in Counseling and a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology. Along the way, I worked as a residence hall director and in human resources for a big ten oil company to pay for that education. When I finally opened my private practice, I thought I had achieved my dream. There was one little problem. After about a year, I realized I wasn’t well-suited to be a therapist! I missed the opportunity to collaborate with others and to introduce and bring new ideas to fruition. Then something happened that changed my life. I received a call from a woman who asked me to “coach” someone in her company. This was 1988 and business coaching was in its infancy. When I asked her for more details, she said, “Lois, you’ve done training, therapy and worked in business. Put it all together and you have a coach.” I still had no clue what I was supposed to do but I have it a try and it was transformational for me. By going from therapy to executive coaching, I was able to use every tool in my kit in a way that still achieved my goal of facilitating personal growth. Because there were none, I developed processes that are still used in coaching today and I built a multi-million dollar coaching firm.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
If anyone tells you the road to their success was smooth, they’re lying. No road is ever smooth. It’s our job to look for the bumps and maneuver around them. The biggest challenge to getting to where I am today was self-doubt and fear. It was tough to leave a good-paying job at a great company with tons of benefits and perks to strike out on my own. Family and friends thought I was crazy and I got little support from them. My mantra became, “Failure is not an option.” I said it when I first woke up and when I went to sleep at night. The first two years were financially challenging as well. When my savings came close to depletion, I took a second mortgage out on my house to stay afloat. Then, suddenly, the seeds I had been planting began to bloom. I learned that all of the advertising money in the world would never take the place of strong professional relationships. When I track where each of my corporate clients came from it leads back to a relationship I had built over the years. And there have been plenty of mistakes. I own them all. The important thing is that I didn’t let those mistakes define me.

Thanks for sharing that. What did you do to distinguish yourself and your business from others?
When I transitioned from being a therapist to executive coaching, it became clear that I could only earn what I could bring in by myself and that was limited by prep time, travel, administrative work, client meetings and, of course, the actual work itself. So I developed a model that no one else had at the time for team-based coaching. If I put together a team of coaches with complementary skills and backgrounds, I could assign them to coaching projects and profit from a portion of what they brought in. Each coach was selected based on their specialty area such as presentation skills, organization design, emotional intelligence, team leadership, etc. I would do the assessment of the client and then identify which coaches would best address those developmental needs. I knew that I personally wasn’t the best coach for every client, but with a cadre of coaches available, I could match them to suit the client’s personality and needs. This was another step in my professional journey as I transitioned from being a sole practitioner to an entrepreneur. Again, not what I had envisioned in my life plan — it was even better. The model was challenged with the proliferation of “coaching” as a profession. Everyone from realtors to hairdressers got into the coaching game, but what set my firm apart was the depth and breadth of business knowledge that each coach brought to the table. And for this reason, we focus almost exclusively on working with executives from major corporations.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Most people wouldn’t know that I established two nonprofit organizations that serve women and girls. MOSTE (Motivating Our Students Through Experience) was founded in 1986 and to this day, it serves at-risk girls by providing them mentorship and assistance to complete high school and go on to college. https://www.moste.org/who-we-are/

More recently, I established Bloom Again Foundation to provide economically vulnerable working women with financial support when a medical challenge causes them to lose income. https://bloomagain.org/

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: https://www.corporatecoachingintl.com
• Other: https://www.drloisfrankel.com/