Susan Allan

An unquenchable thirst for a better life, for everyone, led me to lifelong learning focused on human potential when I was a teenager. I observed the remarkable accomplishments of my family while also recognizing their challenges, and I vowed to discover solutions, believing that peace, joy, love, and success are our human birthright.

That knowing has inspired a lifetime of discovery: knowledge, tools, and skills that transform what we experience today into what we long to achieve tomorrow. For many decades, I have been studying the fundamental causes and cures for challenges in business, communication, relationships, conflict, and consciousness, asking, what else is possible?

We can continue to acquire new skills, make more profound choices, and create outcomes that once appeared beyond our grasp.

For me, the greatest reward is continuing to discover how to create a better life and sharing what I learn with thousands of others to enhance their lives.

Years ago, I was reflecting on Dr. Maya Angelou, whose books I had read and whose extraordinary intellect, resilience, authenticity, and humanity had profoundly affected me. I marveled at the extraordinary life she had created despite the extreme challenges she had faced. Suddenly, my telephone rang. The caller ID read: Maya Angel. The synchronicity was extraordinary.

Dr. Angelou gave me a message that has remained with me ever since: “Don’t give up. Never quit once you discover your purpose.”

For 27 years, through every challenge and opportunity, I have carried that wisdom into my work. The route to an important goal may change many times. We can learn more, discover another solution, acquire new tools and skills, and find another path. Once we discover our purpose, we continue finding ways to fulfill it.

We all must compromise, but we can never settle!

Learn self-awareness skills to know what you want and add the ability to envision the career, intimate relationship, and lifestyle you desire. Then acquire the tools and skills required to achieve them.

The essentials include mastering self-soothing, decision-making, communication, negotiation, sales, and the ability to prevent and resolve conflict. Learn to understand what others want and need and communicate your own preferences in ways that create peaceful and successful outcomes for everyone.

Commit to lifelong learning. Choose exceptional teachers, expand your abilities continuously, and surround yourself with those who inspire you to reach your biggest goals.

Compromise on the details while remaining devoted to everything essential to creating the career, relationships, and life you truly desire. Learn to compromise peacefully, and never settle!

27 years ago, when I said I was a coach, they replied, “Oh, like for Olympic athletes?” “No,” I replied, “a combination of an expert in various modalities and the cheerleader I used to be.” “OH!”

Today, a coaching career is different. An International Coaching Federation study reported that 53% of coaches earned less than $30,000 annually, with active coaches serving an average of 12 clients.

Building a thriving coaching business and developing the skills to produce extraordinary client outcomes requires extensive training, support, practice, self-mastery, and business-building expertise. At the same time, coaching is now understood and embraced worldwide, giving millions access to knowledge, tools, skills, and support that can transform their businesses, careers, relationships, and lives.

The enormous opportunity is to develop our own coaching strengths, including listening deeply, asking insightful questions, identifying the clients’ wants and needs, teaching unique and powerful practical tools and skills, and providing the support that enables clients to achieve their biggest goals in the shortest time.

The future of coaching belongs to those of us who create and promote their clients’ extraordinary outcomes, continually master our craft, and build businesses based on the most powerful recommendation of all: clients whose lives and results demonstrate the value of exceptional coaching.

Our values, whether personal or professional, mirror our beliefs, wants, and needs. These form the foundation of our thoughts and decisions about our careers, our relationships, and every area of our lives.

Our decisions become actions, our actions become habits, and our habits shape our futures. This is why understanding our deepest values is essential: they quietly influence whom we love, the work we choose, the goals we pursue, how we treat others, and ultimately who we become.

These core values become our compass, guiding our decisions, the relationships we nurture, the work we do, the way we treat each other, and ultimately determining our futures.

For me, peace, joy, love, kindness, lifelong learning, honesty, and personal responsibility are key. Equally important is creating mutually satisfying outcomes. These values shape how I communicate, make decisions, prevent and resolve conflict, conduct business, and nurture important relationships.

Above all, I value our ability to evolve. The more deeply we understand ourselves and one another, the greater our ability to create lives filled with meaning, loving relationships, purposeful work, and joy.