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Career and Executive Coaching from Hong Kong

     
Angela Spaxman's Profile
Written for the Women Business Owners Club, December 2003

For the past ten years I've been searching for a career that would keep inspiring me, and in a location compatible with my husband's career. From the moment I started my coaching business 3 years ago, I was sure I was on the right track. Now that my business is established and continuing to grow I'm so much more satisfied. So I suppose it is quite appropriate that my clients are people in career transition, often with the idea, just like me, that they want to work for themselves. 

In my 20's and early 30's I worked in the forest industry in Western Canada as a logging engineer. I can't think of a job that would be more inappropriate for Hong Kong! I spent most of my days walking in wilderness forests based out of small logging camps on the West Coast of B.C. At the same time my partner of 25 years, Dave, was traveling to Asia very frequently for his work. Finally he was offered a job in Bangkok and moved to Thailand. I followed later and spent an enjoyable year learning Thai and exploring the county. After a short stint in Hong Kong we returned to Vancouver with a dream that our ideal work scenario would be for us both to have our own businesses in Hong Kong. 

At this point, I committed myself to finding a career that could move much more freely around the world. Instead of continuing work as an engineer, I embarked on a different journey and started my own business providing management training and consulting to the forest industry. Two years later as the business was beginning to flourish, Dave was offered a job back in Hong Kong. It was a wrench but Hong Kong seemed to offer opportunities to both of us, so in 1996 we packed up and moved back across the Pacific. 

I worked for two different corporate training companies, before discovering the profession of coaching. As soon as I learned the business model of coaching, I was very confident that I could do this job. But I also knew I probably had much more to learn than I realized, and I wanted to do it really well. (Among other things, I had to prove to my husband that it would work!) So I immediately invested in top class coach training (Coach U) and hired my own coach. At the time Dave was also starting his own business, so we faced the "start-up" pressures together. 

After three full years, my business is finally profitable and is still developing. I work with between 10 and 15 individual clients, I run a personal development program for small groups and I dabble in various other projects in training and corporate coaching. This year I am focusing on developing more services including personality assessments and staff development programs for small businesses. I have part-time administrative help to keep all my systems going. 

My website has proven to be one of my most successful marketing tools. Last year I added some very specific targeted advice to my homepage. I describe certain situations my clients find themselves in, and the exact strategy I would use to help them. My clients have told me that when they read such specific descriptions, it resonates with them. And they feel more confident in my ability to help them because I describe it precisely. This system starts an in-depth and personal conversation with potential clients before I even meet them and has resulted in many internet surfers becoming my clients. Take a look at www.spaxman.com.hk to see exactly what I mean. This is truly a great trick which could be adapted for many businesses. 

I've discovered that to stay inspired and keep my business fresh, I must keep learning. It's what motivates me. So being a coach is great because I always learn so much from my clients and I'm inspired by their ambition, their abilities and their courage. I also continue to take coaching and personal development training, and once again I've hired myself a new coach. I feel very generous investing in myself! 

I'm also inspired by the vision many coaches share that there is plenty of everything we need in the world, that we create more wealth and happiness by sharing what we have, and that we don't have to do it alone. That's why I've invested a lot of time and energy into creating the Hong Kong Coaching Community (www.coachinghk.org), a non-profit organization aimed at helping people to become professional coaches and at promoting the benefits of coaching to the public. 

My first coach inspired me to follow my dream of proving that coaches could work together for mutual benefit rather than acting as competitors. So far my investment has paid off in building my reputation, broadening the reach and respectability of coaching and by surrounding me with warm, positive coaches who share my vision. Also, the WBOC is a great club for hanging out with inspiring people who share what they've learned. 

What advice would I give to entrepreneurs? Work towards a vision of what you most want. Even though it may seem impossible at first, it's amazing what opportunities come your way when you keep your eyes open. Secondly, design your business to suit you, your personality and your preferences. You'll be more successful when you do things your way rather than following some model that doesn't match your strengths and desires. Third, enjoy the process. It's easy to think that you'll enjoy yourself once you are established, or once you reach a certain stage. In reality you have the opportunity to enjoy your business as it develops every day. Like watching a child growing up, you can never go back, so enjoy it now.