Today we’d like to introduce you to Janet Wood.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Janet. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
For as long as I can remember I’ve loved helping people improve themselves, I just did a really shitty job of it for many years. I remember walking into a workshop I signed up for in September 2014 called “Leading Your Life” and it was led by two Executive Coaches. At the time, I had never heard of an Executive Coach and honestly had always judged anyone who called themselves a “life coach”, so looking back I’m so grateful I had no idea what I was walking into. That weekend workshop disrupted me in all the best ways, and I was hooked. I left saying to myself “I need to hire a coach, and I want to be a coach.” Ten months later, I hired my first coach and I was off to the races. Having someone skilled enough to handle my bullshit was exactly what I needed because I was an expert at talking myself into the stories that kept me from reaching the heights that I wanted to get to.
I experienced so much growth and transformation for the next two years, it was incredible. However, after ups and downs of building and investing, I found myself still struggling to build a thriving practice. Most coaches are solopreneurs, and I was finding that I felt lost and frustrated and desperate for the support that comes from being part of a team. Fortunately, my pursuits had caught the eyes of the CEO of Novus Global, a budding executive coaching firm committed to creating a tribe of elite coaches serving teams and leaders around the world.
From the moment I started at Novus Global, my growth skyrocketed, which also means I was faced with some difficult hard-to-look-at truths about myself because when you’re on a team, you can’t hide, but you’re also not alone. I now had the support of some of the best coaches in the world there to help me diagnose all of my blindspots with my coaching practice. After only being with the firm for two years, my practice has more than tripled and I’m coaching top executives at million and billion dollar companies and I’ve become more effective than I ever thought I could be at doing what I do. Our passion is to create teams and cultures that transform the people that get to be a part of them. The cool part is that’s exactly what we’ve created on our team and my life is better because of it.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Two years into building my practice, I was barely making enough money to sustain myself and was in debt. I was living with my mom (sharing a room) in order to make ends meet. I remember going on a long walk and crying, dreading what it would mean if nothing changed. Growing up we had a long period of time where we struggled financially and some of the experiences we had created a belief in me that I would never be financially independent or have the kind of financial success I desired. Looking back I’m glad I leaned into those moments and asked for help. It was tempting to avoid looking at the brutal facts of my present reality, but facing it is what gave me the tenacity to keep going and get strategic.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We work with teams and leaders, executives and entrepreneurs, to explore what they’re capable of through 1 on 1, group coaching and team trainings.
Our clients often tell us “If you would have told me what we would have accomplished working together when we started, I would have told you it was impossible”.
To borrow a quote from An Everyone Culture, a book that did extensive research on one of the most successful work cultures in the country, it says “In an ordinary organization, most people are doing a second job no one is paying them for…Most people are spending time and energy covering up their weaknesses, managing other people’s impressions of them, showing themselves to their best advantage, playing politics, hiding their inadequacies, hiding their uncertainties, hiding their limitations.” What we do is help people create work cultures with radical transparency. In essence, we help people do more in less time with higher levels of satisfaction, because we take away the second “job” of covering up.
The other thing we’re very proud of is that we give a lot of our coaching away. One of our partners is Defy Ventures, an organization working to end mass incarceration and cycles of recidivism by using entrepreneurship as a tool to transform legacies and human potential.
What were you like growing up?
For all the enneagram nerds out there, I’m a three wing two (the Achiever) and this showed up from the time I was five and putting on world-renown (goes in quotes) performances for my mom and her video camera. In some ways, my drive to be the best at everything I do has been super helpful, but like any strength it’s also been a way that I got in my own way. Thankfully years of coaching (and therapy) helped me discover some of my most common blindspots when it comes to moving forward. There were times that I didn’t even give myself permission to go after something if I thought that I couldn’t be “the best” at it. One of my favorite mantras at our company is “shitty first draft”. We use it for everything to drill into our way of thinking that it takes a shitty first draft to create something that eventually becomes world-class.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.janetwood.me
- Phone: 6268414418
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @janetleewood
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/janetleewood
- Other: www.novus.global
Image Credit:
Photo Credit: May Iosotaluno (@mayiosotaluno) and Rachel B Photography (@rachaelbphoto)
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