Client results

What actually changed. Five stories, told straight.

Coaching results are easy to inflate and hard to verify, so here’s my rule: every story below is real work with a real client, shared with their blessing. Names are shortened and a few identifying details altered – the outcomes are not.

Case studies

Priya N.Senior Product Manager, fintech · London
90-Day Reset

The situation

Eight years at the same fintech, consistently rated “exceeds expectations”, and passed over for promotion twice. Priya arrived convinced the problem was visibility. It wasn’t – it was that she’d never actually made the case, out loud, to the person who could say yes. She was waiting to be noticed.

What we worked on

We built her promotion case like a product pitch: evidence, impact numbers, the gap it filled for the business. Then we rehearsed the ask – three times, with me playing her sceptical VP. The first run-through, she apologised four times in ten minutes. By the third, none.

The outcome

Promotion confirmed within four months of finishing the programme – and because we’d rehearsed the money conversation too, she negotiated the salary band, not just the title. Her words at the review session: “It stopped sounding like an apology.”

Daniel O.Engineering Manager (first role), scale-up · remote
90-Day Reset

The situation

Promoted from senior engineer to manager of his own former teammates, with no training and a backlog he was still personally coding through at 11pm. Daniel booked the call in week four of the job, already exhausted, already wondering if he’d made a mistake.

What we worked on

First, triage: what only he could do versus what he was doing out of habit and guilt. We wrote his real first-90-days plan in session two – one-to-one cadence, two delegations a fortnight with proper handovers, and a hard rule about opening the IDE after 6pm. Then we rehearsed the awkward bit: renegotiating expectations with a friend who was now a report.

The outcome

Six months on, his team’s engagement scores came back highest in the department, and his own hours came back down to human. The delegation habit stuck – his phrase for it, “handover, not abandonment”, apparently now gets used across the engineering org.

Sofia R.Head of Marketing → independent brand strategist
90-Day Reset

The situation

Sofia arrived asking for interview coaching – she’d decided the fix for her Sunday-night dread was the same job at a different company. The audit in session one told a different story: it wasn’t her employer she’d outgrown, it was the shape of employment itself. She’d been quietly freelancing on the side for two years and calling it a hobby.

What we worked on

The honest question she’d been avoiding: what would going independent actually require? We costed it – savings runway, first three clients, a floor price she wouldn’t undercut. The rehearsal session was her resignation conversation, which she was dreading far more than the leap itself.

The outcome

She resigned well – so well her old employer became her first retained client. Went independent in June; matched her old salary by November. Her review-session note to me: “I didn’t need permission. I needed arithmetic.”

James W.Clinical Team Lead, NHS trust · London
Deep-Dive → Reset

The situation

James booked a one-off Deep-Dive for a single problem: a restructure was landing his team with unsafe workloads, and he needed to challenge it upwards – to a director he found genuinely intimidating – without torching the relationship or his own prospects.

What we worked on

The Deep-Dive built the argument: patient-safety framing, the data his director couldn’t wave away, and the two concessions he could live with. He converted to the full Reset for one reason – to rehearse it. We ran the conversation live on a Tuesday, including the part where the director goes quiet and you have to not fill the silence.

The outcome

He had the real conversation that Thursday. Two of his three asks were agreed in the room; the third within a month. “It went almost exactly the way we practised,” he told me – “including the silence. I counted to four, like we did, and he blinked first.”

Amrita K.Senior Associate, City law firm · London
90-Day Reset

The situation

The classic quiet senior. Amrita was the associate partners trusted with the hardest drafting – and the one who said perhaps a third of what she thought in any meeting with clients in the room. The partnership-track feedback was maddeningly vague: “more presence”. Nobody could tell her what that meant.

What we worked on

We got specific where the feedback wasn’t. Presence, for her, decomposed into three trainable moves: speaking in the first ten minutes of every meeting, disagreeing with a partner in front of a client (once, deliberately, on ground she’d chosen), and ending her points with a full stop instead of a question mark. We rehearsed each one before she used it.

The outcome

By session six she was leading client calls on her biggest matter. At her next review, “more presence” had disappeared from the feedback – replaced by a named partner sponsoring her case. The partnership conversation is now a “when”, scheduled, not a “whether”.

None of these people became someone else. They became harder to ignore.
Meera Shah

The wall

In their words, with their job titles on

Shorter notes from the end-of-programme reviews – the kind people write when nobody’s marketing to them.

I’d been to two coaches before Meera. Both were lovely. She was useful – there’s a difference, and it’s worth every penny of it.
Rachel B.Operations Director, logistics
She asked me one question in session three that I’m still thinking about a year later. My whole promotion case grew out of the answer.
Tomás M.Data Science Lead, retail
The rehearsal sounded gimmicky when I read about it. It is the single most useful thing I have done in fifteen years of “development”.
Helen D.Deputy Head, secondary school
Meera told me in the discovery call that coaching wasn’t what I needed yet, and pointed me to a therapist. I came back eight months later ready. That honesty is why I trust her.
Leo F.Creative Director, agency
Our twelve new managers still quote the workshop at each other on Slack. “Handover, not abandonment” is basically company policy now.
Nadia A.Head of People, fintech scale-up
I expected sympathy. I got a plan with dates on it and someone who noticed when I missed them. Turns out that’s what I was paying for.
Grace K.Charity CEO, London

The small print, said out loud

What I can’t promise you

I can’t promise a promotion, a pay rise, or a painless quarter – anyone who does is selling something other than coaching. Outcomes belong to you, your organisation, and a fair amount of timing.

What I can promise: a structured ninety days, questions that don’t let you off the hook, rehearsal before every hard conversation, and a straight answer at session two if it isn’t working – with your money back for the sessions we don’t use. Every story on this page started with exactly that deal.

See how the programme is built

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The people above all started with the same thirty minutes.

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