This is a little uncomfortable to write.
I have been doing this work for a very long time. Long enough that I should be able to explain, clearly and concisely, what I do that helps my clients get results.
And I could explain it.
Sort of.
I could tell people I coach executives and leadership teams. I could talk about awareness, integrity, reflection, presence, and the space between. I could describe my credentials, my experience, and the kinds of challenges clients bring to me.
All of it was true.
It just wasn’t the whole truth.
Something was missing, and I knew it.
That feeling kept following me into conversations. Someone would ask what made my work different, and I would give them an answer. A good answer. Sometimes even an eloquent one.
But inside, I would be thinking, That still isn’t it.
It is an odd experience to know that something works and not be able to explain why.
Client after client was getting results. Not identical results—their lives, organizations, and circumstances were far too different for that—but there was something recognizable happening.
A shift.
They would enter a conversation seeing a situation one way and, somewhere along the way, begin to see it differently. Sometimes, the shift was subtle. And sometimes, it changed everything.
I could see it happening repeatedly.
I just couldn’t see my part in it clearly enough to name it.
Was it the questions I asked?
Maybe.
Was it experience? Intuition? The way I listened? The fact that I was willing to stay with something after other people might have rushed toward an answer?
Yes. Probably. All of those things.
But still—not quite it.
I kept wondering, What am I really doing with my clients that improves their results?
Not what does coaching do.
Not what does an executive coach do.
What am I doing?
Looking beyond the breakthrough
That question sounds simple now. It wasn’t.
There is something vulnerable about examining your own work this closely. You risk discovering that what you thought was distinctive isn’t. Or that the thing clients value is different from the thing you have been proudly describing.
Maybe the “magic” was just experience accumulated over decades. Maybe it could not be separated into parts. Maybe trying to explain it would flatten it into another model with boxes and arrows.
I didn’t want to do that.
I also couldn’t let it go.
So, I started pulling things apart.
I thought about conversations that had stayed with me. Moments when a client became quiet. Moments when the energy changed. Moments when the problem they had brought into the room was still technically there, but somehow no longer had the same hold on them.
I looked at what happened before the breakthrough—not only the breakthrough itself.
And eventually, I noticed something.
I wish I could tell you it arrived as one dramatic revelation. It was more like something slowly coming into focus. One connection, then another. A phrase that felt closer. A pattern I could suddenly see across years of work.
I began to understand that I wasn’t helping clients by finding the missing answer.
I was noticing something else.
I’m going to resist explaining the rest right now. Partly because I’m not ready to reveal all of it. And partly because the moment I package it too neatly, it begins to sound like marketing—and this did not begin as a marketing exercise.
It began as a question I genuinely could not answer.
Testing what I thought I had found
Once I thought I had an answer, I did what I usually do when I encounter an idea that feels important: I tested it.
I tried the language with clients.
I tried it with people who were considering becoming clients.
I paid attention to their reactions. Where did they lean in? Where did I lose them? Did they recognize what I was describing, or was I simply becoming attached to my own clever explanation?
They recognized it.
That was the part I wasn’t prepared for.
Existing clients could see it in the work we had already done. Prospective clients heard it and understood something about what they had been looking for. Some of them became clients.
The idea wasn’t merely making sense. It was making the work easier to see.
And then, I looked at my website.
Oh.
When new understanding leads to rebuilding
The website was doing what it had been created to do. It described the business I understood at the time. But I was no longer standing in the same place.
I had found the thread running through the work, and it wasn’t there.
That is why I am rebuilding the website.
Not because I woke up one morning and disliked the colors. Not because someone announced that my font was out of fashion. And not because every business is apparently supposed to redesign itself every few years.
I am rebuilding it because I finally understand something I could not explain before.
The business has not suddenly become something else. If anything, it has become more itself.
This is my first time writing here, and perhaps that is why I’m beginning with the mess rather than the reveal.
For the next five weeks, I’m going to share pieces of what I discovered and what it has set in motion.
I don’t know yet how polished those pieces will be.
But maybe, that is the point.
Subscribe to Before the Results on Substack for thoughtful reflections on leadership, growth, and the inner work that shapes what comes next. When you subscribe, you’ll also receive a complimentary Field Guide to Discover the Matrix—a downloadable companion designed to help you pause, reflect, and explore the ideas in the book more deeply.
Comments +