Coach v Mentor v Advisor

I think my darkest times through running an agency have often been when I’ve had a coach but they’re not a coach they’ve never steep foot into qualifying as a coach they’re an adviser and advisors talk about what works for them and you know the only thing you can be sure of is that you are not the same as me and what lights you up will not light me up.
Some bits might be the same but our context is completely different skills as well as our strengths and when as soon as you offer advice to someone or word you deviate them from their path and it is so profound the damage and the impact that can cause and it can really really set you off.
No Bullshit talks is a podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs there’s too much bullshit out there especially when it comes to business.
This podcast aims to highlight what’s true and what’s not in the world of Entrepreneurship bringing you honest and raw conversations about the roller coaster that is entrepreneurship.
Each week my guest will be a high performing entrepreneur sharing the ups and downs of their journey and helping you prepare for the road ahead while providing you with actionable insights and absolute gems of knowledge.
Stay tuned as I introduce this week’s guest.
Holly Tennock is the founder of a PR agency which she grew for 14 years before exiting in 2019.
She then qualified as an executive coach so she can now help other agency owners prepare for an exit.
She’s also now the founder of Wilder Work which creates impactful nature-led experiences for teams.
I present to you this week’s guest Holly.
[Music]
So Holly welcome to No Bullshit Talk.
I’m so excited to talk to you today actually.
I feel like there’s a lot of questions that I have to ask you but I know that lots of the audience also have to ask you just because of your work that you do now and what you did and your journey that you’ve been on so I’m very excited to have you here.
Thank you very much I’m delighted to be here.
Ah do you want to tell the audience who you are what you do.
Yeah um so I’m Holly Tennock uh I used to be a political journalist where I started off my career and I then thought PR looks like it be better so I started off PR agency when I was 28 without ever having set foot in another PR agency in my life might have short circuited a few things and then I grew this agency called Journalista for 10 years and at the end of that I sold.
So I started in 2009 sold it in 2019 just before the pandemic and then I did a two-year earn out to a company called ZPB which is a larger marketing slightly larger marketing and agency and they wanted to bring in a PR function and then I left after I finished my earn out and I started a company called Wild Work and I also requalified as a coach so I also coach other agency founders.
Such a wild journey.
I’m just like cool and thinking so many things about that and but 10 years though running an agency but that’s I totally feel you because I’m 10 years into my agency journey and and also I never stepped foot in another agency first and it’s definitely not the right thing to do.
When you speak to most of the agency owners they’ve all been in an agency client yeah exactly and they’ve seen how it works and they’re like right I can do better here’s what we’ll do.
But we just sort of delved in which is I just find your own way in agency world is not the easiest which will definitely come to.
But I want started the very beginning political journalism.
Tell me more about that like what sort of stories did you work on…

And stuff.
So I actually started off in the NHS and started working there. As they were doing a bunch of reforms, my job became redundant. And I thought I never really wanted to be in strategic HR in the NHS. I always really wanted to be a journalist.
So I took that opportunity to contact a trade industry magazine and got in touch and went down there. I started writing stories for them quite quickly because I had that deeper understanding of the NHS and how it worked. I was also a pretty good writer.
But, you know, I started where most people do. I used to get bags of tapes that they would send to me, and I would spend all night transcribing them.
Oh my God.
So I used to get paid to do that because no one wanted to do it. I learned how people ask questions. You know I learned how to phrase things in a way that was good for people to read, and I was getting feedback directly.
Then I’d go into the HSJ offices, which were then at Mornington Crescent, and get in early. Good or bad, terrible people pleaser that I was, I would take all of the disgusting cups that were all over their offices that looked like they hadn’t been touched for a millennia and wash them all up.
They used to have lots of work experience people, but I was the work experience person that just got in a bit early, sorted stuff out, and tried to make an impression. As a result, I got quite a lot of freelance work. I’d also like to think it wasn’t my washing up.
I started to get quite a lot of paid freelance work, which then made me go and qualify as a journalist specializing in what they called periodical magazines.
Yeah, yeah.
Then I got a job working for a magazine called *Regeneration and Renewal*, which at that time was very focused on the politics and economics around regenerating some of the less prosperous areas of the country.
I spent a lot of time going up to former coal mining areas, lots of time in Sheffield, understanding how some of the European money was being spent, questioning how it was being spent, triangulating that with how the councils wanted things to be spent, how it felt on the ground, and writing some really lovely pieces exposing some of the things that were going wrong at the time, which I’d say are still reverberating now.
One thing that strikes me, as we’re having these absolutely horrendous marches and protests across the country, was one of the stories I wrote when I was up in Sheffield. Which was about Sports Soccer getting an enormous EU grant to bring jobs to an area that had second-generation joblessness after the coal mines were shut. So your dad didn’t work, and consequently you’ve never seen anyone go out to work as an 18 or 19-year-old, so it turns out you don’t work either.
And so Sports Soccer were given a load of money by the EU to build these big warehouses and factories on brownfield sites. Sounds like good news. There are going to be loads of jobs brought into this area. But when the job ads went out, they were only in Polish. Under EU legislation, they didn’t have to publish those job ads in English, so only Polish people could apply for those roles and nobody locally got them.
That’s ridiculous.
It’s legal, right?
That’s bizarre.
Yeah. I think when you sometimes delve into the context around why people feel the way they do and why we have Brexit, people really talk about those stories. I am anti-Brexit. I’m very left-wing. But I think working on those stories gave me much more compassion and understanding about how it actually is to live in these areas that are you know generationally poor and then being systematically deprived of all of the opportunities that you and I would have had growing up in London in more affluent areas.
You know, I’m from Speke myself, which is one of the biggest council estates in the UK and one of the worst. But my parents had me very young. My dad got a PhD in criminology and moved down to the Home Office. So I’ve had the gift of seeing two sides.
I really enjoyed that job as a journalist, and I felt like I had a lot of empathy and understanding that I could bring to it.
That’s amazing. I do feel like journalism is a really interesting place to go. I’d be fascinated to do journalism, but I think journalists have a really bad rap, right? They look like they’re just cutthroat, they’ll do anything for a story sort of thing. How much of that is accurate?
Oh my God.
Really?
Like it is such an interesting industry. I went on to call my agency Journalista because I wanted that more cutthroat, that more abrasive, simple focus really on the story and the power of the truth and a strong narrative to come through into PR, which for me…

Now, I had never set foot in an agency. I’d never been a client. I’d certainly been the journalist getting a load of woolly nonsense from journalist and just thought sorry from PRs and thinking what is this, you know? There’s a story hidden in here somewhere, maybe?
It’s all marked up instead.
Yeah, pick up the phone and talk to the people behind the story and get something really powerful. Often that was far better for the organization than what they were putting out themselves.
So yeah, did they get a bad rap? I mean it certainly didn’t teach me to be a good manager.
Really?
Yeah, I would, you know, I always thought that I was being a good manager because I wasn’t screaming at people, printing out their copy and ripping it up in front of them before 9:00 in the morning, sending them emails in capital letters in red.
And, you know, I worked on a pretty chill periodical and I once saw my news editor and features editor have a physical fight. I mean they’d been geeky guys, it was quite horrifying, but not for the reasons you might think.
You know, it was all ego. This all ego. And I remember I met Ed Miliband, I had a really good chat with him, I met his special adviser, and we had been trying to get an interview with him for quite a while on the desk. The next day they contacted me like, “We’d really love to do a story with Holly,” and my features editor jumped in and was like, “I want that story,” and was very devoted about it.
And I just thought, well yeah, if you want it, if it’s really important to you, have it.
And I regret that to this day.
Yeah, that’s you.
And I just think, I wish I had backed myself more. I’ve had a lot of confidence. I got the job because I was sort of asking a lot of questions that seemed quite forthright compared to my peers, and you know that was the feedback I got. I wasn’t afraid to put my hand up. I’d be sitting with the transport editor at the times and some others, but they’re mostly men in my sector, and I’d be arm up, arm up, no, no, stand up. I’d often go and grab the minister at the end.
But yeah, I definitely could have backed myself more and got some better stories. It’s quite an ego male-trenched place.
Yeah, and I think that you were quite young though, from what you said. So if you started your agency at 28, you would obviously have been younger than that. And I think especially back then, I feel like the world is a little bit more open to standing up for yourself and having more of an outspoken thing. It was so hierarchical back then, right? It’s like if you say one thing and you’re subordinate, that’s like, you know, you’re fired sort of thing. Your job’s at risk and you’re just a twenty-something. It’s hard.
Yeah, I mean me and a lot of the people that I worked with would get barked at by one of the editors, really. You would now call it bullying.
Yeah.
They’d be hauled up in front of HR and you’d go and have a sob in the loo, get a wet hotel towel, pat your face down, put your face on the dryer and feel massive shame for the fact that you had a bit of a blotchy face. You know, I’m a crier, so I think, yeah, as much as I would then give it some on the other side, it was quite a, you know, it was a “your copy is 100 words over, this is how you failed today” sort of missive.
How do you deal with so much criticism and negativity? Because doesn’t it just wear down on your like confidence? You said you were a confident person, but surely at the end of consistently hearing how you failed, not like, “Okay, great, that’s great Holly, you’re amazing, you’ve done really well here, but here’s how you can improve,” it’s like you’re a failure in this way, this way, this way. Doesn’t it just erode all your confidence?
So I think that’s where culture comes in. I think it’s who’s setting the culture.
So even though there were a few characters on the desk, I would say the culture of that magazine was gorgeous. My news editor would drop me a little text at the end of the day saying, “Great colour in that quote, Holly.” He would say, he would back me to the hilt. His editor wouldn’t say boo to a goose, although he had this sort of stoic resilience. Then one of the other editors was just a bit meek but incredibly intelligent.
So I think that’s the thing about culture, right? That sense of actually here we are you know you can have a few bad eggs if you overall what you’re hearing is positive. Then I think it can build resilience.
And I think for me actually, it didn’t erode my confidence. It did build my resilience, and I got a few good stories to tell.
I think that’s how you focus.
I think randomly, what really just pissed me off to the point of leaving…

Was the pay. It was low, really low.
Especially because I’d been in the NHS and then I’d actually taken a comms role for the RCN, so I was paid pretty well. Then I had to take a £10K pay cut after doing a qualification to go and be a journalist.
And then looking at you know that was interesting is the levels weren’t shown, like who gets paid when and how. I had a lot of debt from uni. I needed to know how I could scale and when I could pay it back, and there was nowhere to find that out readily. It seemed very slow.
And I think the other thing was, randomly, I used to get a rail pass which would reduce my rail fare, which passed on to the company, and then they randomly said, “Oh, we’re not paying for that.”
Something I’m a bit like that so was snapped in me. I’m a bit like that. I was like, that’s just so nonsense. It just added to that overall sense of, I’m working my ass off, I’m never going to get paid for it, I’m feeling really skint, I can’t go out for dinner with my mates.
And I went and took a PR job for £20K more, like in a council. I regretted it as soon as I did.
Yeah, so I feel like a lot of people who are out there at the moment, especially now everyone’s kind of becoming a content creator and doing entrepreneurship, and that’s obviously the reason why I do this podcast, there are a lot of people who are business owners watching it, but there’s also a lot of budding people who are trying to learn and be like, “How do I set up my business?”
They’re in a current job and they’re like, “Do I leave?” And so listening to you say that you were like, “Okay, I snapped.” There was one last straw. Usually you’re unhappy and then one last thing, and you’re like, “I’m not doing it anymore.”
But then you were saying you went into a PR job and you regretted that. So what made you regret that, though?
I then went and worked for a council that was overseeing other councils. It was called London Councils, and at the time it had a Tory majority.
A lot of the stories I was writing were really against my values. They were things like, “Increased numbers of migrants mean that we can’t count how many people are at the GP surgeries,” and all this sort of stuff.
I was just chewing on wasps to write those sorts of press releases. Even though I could do a good job, I just felt an intense loathing for what I was doing.

So, you know, I think I would say that in every decision that I’ve made in my career where I have taken a salary step down, it’s been the right one.
Interesting. It’s really interesting. I think this is what I’ve started to realize as well. I always give this advice to people because every time I’ve taken on a client that I thought wasn’t right for me, but they had a decent budget, I’ve regretted it. They actually end up treating you badly, you end up resenting yourself, you resent the work. If they don’t align with your values, and actually the ones that you really believe in and want to help, you don’t mind how little you get paid if it’s worthwhile. Well, to an extent obviously, you’ve got to get paid enough.
It’s interesting. I’d say often the bigger the client, sometimes the more professional they are, and sometimes the less the problem. Sometimes our biggest problems have been from our smallest clients.
So yeah, I guess it does depend.
I think for me it’s just that overall theme of follow your interest and the money will come, and your values. That’s the most important thing. You have to resonate with that company and you have to believe in what it is. Otherwise, if you’re writing stories or whatever your job you’re doing, you’re creating content.
Because a lot of people come to me about content and they ask me about brand partnerships. I think that I always say don’t accept money from a brand that you just wouldn’t use yourself and things like that. It has to be that alignment. You just end up resenting yourself.
Absolutely. And I think one message I’d give to my younger self is, if you’ve walked in a door to the wrong room, what? Yeah, like no, don’t do it.
I think so many times we all make the wrong decisions. We take the wrong career path, we do this, but then you feel like, okay, I’m in this room now, I’m going to stay here. And I think if I had just gone, “Oh my God, I made the wrong decision,” and stepped back into journalism, I think I’d have been a lot happier. And I think I would possibly then have spent a bit longer at a career I really loved and been able to use more of those skills in an even more comprehensive way in what I did in my later career.
I mean, no regrets. I’m happy with where I am. However, I really do think if you walk in the wrong door, get out. Same for relationships, same for friendships. Just because you’ve had a go.
I think sometimes I rot myself for not being a complete finisher, but then also I wasn’t happy running my agency from about year six. I did another four years and then two years of an earn-out. Your life is short.
You know, it’s that sunk cost fallacy.
Everyone’s sort of like, “Well, I’ve committed to it now. It’ll be such a waste of time if I don’t just see it through,” or they’ll see it as a weakness that you’re quitting. Quitting seems to be such a negative word. People are just like, “Oh, you’re weak and you’re a quitter.”
And I just think, do you know what? You’re stronger if you can say, “This isn’t right for me. I’m moving on.” Because it’s easy to stay in and just ignore it.
Be brave that you just took a path rather than sitting somewhere afraid to take a path. If you are brave, you’re going to walk into a few wrong doors.
Yes.
And it’s okay to then go, “Oh sorry, I don’t like this room, get out.”
Yeah, I think that’s way stronger. It’s very easy to sit there and just see it through and be pained inside. All you’re doing is hurting yourself, and people do that.
Because they’re basically forcing themselves into something they don’t necessarily want to be in, in order to fit the place.
Yeah, and I did too.
It’s nuts. I think so many people do it because they’re so embarrassed about their image and what they want, and they’re sacrificing their own happiness for this.
But talking about Journalista, because obviously you did this, you didn’t enjoy that particular job, but you were like, right, PR obviously pays a lot more money, but I don’t have this company or the council stories, so I want to do it myself.
So tell me—
There was a step in the middle.
About six to nine months into being at London Councils, a job came up working for the European Parliament. It was a job working in Strasbourg, in Brussels, and in the UK working from home. So that came with a lot of freedom. It came with a big expense budget, as they did at that time.
And I jumped into it with both feet, got the job and loved it.
I was in Brussels for a week, I was in Strasbourg. I spoke French at school, so it was nice to pick that back up. It was a lovely combination of politics, which is my heartland—I was a member of the Labour Party when I was seven—and then also lots of writing, and that’s probably where I learned my PR skills.
I was working for a number of the committees out there and I worked for the Women and Gender Equality Committee. What you used to get back then were these big multilingual press offices, and the copy they put out—you would have needed a microscope to find the story. A lot of the content was very dry.
So I had a lovely job of taking some of this dry stuff and sitting in the committees and just finding the juice.
For example, the Women and Gender Equalities Committee was putting something out about changing advertising legislation bla bla bla to be less sexist or something, and there were thousands of pages and numerous numbers. I was thinking, how can we make this into something that people want to read? How can we make a positive story about the EU actually doing something interesting?
So I went and found a load of really sexist European adverts, where it’s like women in short skirts in Poland bending over doing the cleaning, and got a whole collection of them together and showed what was now becoming illegal through this legislation. Also how some of the things in England had changed, and really pictorially told this story.
And it was across every single broadsheet and tabloid. They all ran with it.
And the press office were like, “What? We’ve never had this sort of coverage or pickup.”
But I was just like, think of it through what do you want to read? You don’t want to read that. You want to look at this.
I then got a bit of a reputation as being able to turn those sorts of stories into something the media liked.
I had lots of lovely dinner parties where it literally felt like the guy was going to come up and recite poetry. People suddenly played the piano and all these things, and I was like, this is great. I really enjoyed myself in that job.
Then the opportunity came to get paid not as a salary, but as a contractor for that role. So in a way they became my first client, and I was able to start up an agency off the back of the reputation that I’d built there.
But very quickly the laws changed, so it couldn’t be seen to be paying an external lobbying company for what it was doing and it had to become a more internal job again.
So it gave me that push into being able to start something off with the first client, making my first hire. But then I reverted back to my heartland really, which was the NHS, which I knew really well. I had lots of contacts there from my days there, and I contacted a few of the health and wellbeing boards that I knew were looking for PR at the time and got some fairly sizable contracts, like six grand a month. Like that.
And yeah, went from there, hired a few people and didn’t look back.

So I think when I’m listening to this, because I think so many people are really struggling with whether they should start their own thing, and agency world is really tough. I think anything to do with services—in a way, a services business is easier to start than a product business because you don’t have all the overheads and costs and everything.
But what I’ve heard is that the ones who seem to do quite well, exactly as you said, they already have this big client that they can take through. Lots of people who seem to have grown their agency from zero to hero in three months, it isn’t that quite how it is. It’s the fact that they were in an agency and they took their biggest clients with them, and that suddenly became their clients in a tiny agency and obviously then they were able to scale.
I think that’s a great head start, but if you don’t have that, it’s obviously a little bit different.
So for those who are listening and thinking, I want to start my company, would you say it is a good idea to build on the original contacts you have? Because I feel like most of the people who do well, it’s the fact that they’ve got these contacts in their original jobs. How would they do that transition? Do you think?
So I think if you’re not starting an agency with a client or someone that you know, it depends. Are you just starting it as a freelancer looking to scale?
Yeah.
What becomes really hard is how do you make the leap from being a freelancer, where you can probably take on about £150k to £200k worth of work comfortably, to thinking actually I’m going to hire people now and we’re going to do that.
And I think that’s where the messy changes.
I agree. And I think that there’s a really weird thing now happening in agency world. I was at a dinner the other day and half the table were like, “I’ve just started my own agency.”
And I’m like, why is everyone starting their own agency? We’ve been through it, we’re like get away from agency. Not quite, but it’s tough. It’s really hard work.
And I get this question a lot. They go, should I stay freelance or should I run an agency?
And I’m always asking, what do you want? Why do you want to start an agency?
When I speak to all these newly founded agency owners, it’s just them. And then I’m like, are you really an agency?
When I wrote a post once on LinkedIn saying that all these people call themselves an agency and they’re one person, they were like, “Why can’t we be a one-person agency?”
I was like, to me, that’s not an agency. You’re still a freelancer. Sure, you might want to scale, you might want to do things, but if you’re one person, you can’t by definition be an agency. You are a freelancer, a sole trader, however you want to call it. You might be a business owner, but you are by yourself.
I think people are outsourcing stuff to other people. It’s a different model though, and it’s not quite the same thing.
I think that’s why I find it really bizarre that people are starting out and they get attached to this term “agency” like it’s got some sort of status and kudos behind it I think.
There’s nothing wrong with just being a freelancer or a consultant or whatever it is.
There’s nothing wrong.
I think it’s about ego.
Yeah, and I think Addie on your podcast put this really well. Whether you’re building a lifestyle business or looking to scale, it’s about being intentional.
If you want to start an agency that really is an agency, it has its culture. Again, coming back to that, what is it if you leave? That has to be something. Otherwise, it is not an agency.
Yeah, it is.
And I think somebody got into a bit of trouble recently for saying freelancers—a freelancer-only model doesn’t make an agency.
And I’d agree with that.
That’s basically what I’m saying, right?
If you’ve got four freelancers, even if they’re working for you four days a week, you’re still not an agency.

I think an agency means you’ve got a pretty decent P&L.
I think until you… have not p p bill you know and that is and that means that you’ve got to have you know con new business marketing you you you’ve got to straddle this feet and you’ve also got different talents that are entirely only available through the agency it’s it’s who also who call yourself that you want.
I mean it’s I I really am at that point just I but I think it’s I think you you’re fooling yourself if you think it’s a hiding to somewhere unless you’re really going to push past a certain thresh.
I think you know certain you just could earn way more money being a freelancer have such a lot less headache and probably have you know actually be able to go on holiday.
Yeah having bed in time with it.
Yeah it’s so and and it’s so interesting and like obviously we’ve both been through it and and I was at an event and I was on a panel and one of the ladies asked me she was like so when you know I I want to start my own agency.
So I said why.
Yeah and me I just like why cuz people think that’s the thing that they’re like because that’s what I want to do.
I was like but why.
She like I want more freedom.
I was like you’re going to get the opposite.
I was like you’re what your you’re you’re freelancer now you’re getting a decent amount of work.
And she was like yeah I’m getting lots of clients it’s manageable.
I was like okay.
She was I want to spend more time with our kids.
So you’re not going to have any time.
I was like when you become from a freelancer to an agency you’re then having to look after all your staff like you said you’re creating a culture.
You have to put out every fire.
There’s when you add more people to the mix there’s just more problems and then obviously you need more revenue.
You’ve got all these overheads.
You got to think about do you want an office.
Even if you don’t want an office you still had to make sure your team have got somewhere nice to work and you had to have all these other benefits.
They to have sick pay.
You had to manage all the internal problems.
There’s a whole load of other stuff and actually you know you won’t get that freedom.
So you have to want to run an agency for a completely different reason.
You have to have a vision for this bigger picture for some bigger entity for whatever reason that is.
And at some point I thought that’s what I wanted.
I thought that because I was freelancing for 5 years…

I did really well from it.
I had so many clients like well I must hire people and that’s the sort of natural progression and then I sort of just stumbled into hiring people.
I didn’t really think I had an agency.
I had a lifestyle business and that was okay and actually I really enjoyed it.
It was small, it was nice, it was fun, it was manageable, it wasn’t that stressful.
We were so profitable and then I started to going to other agency events and I met these agency coaches and I met all these people were telling me you cannot run a lifestyle business.
It is bad.
You must grow to scale.
You must exit.
You must do this.
Go on this growth plan.
I join all these masterminds.
I learn all the things to become a real agency and it was the worst thing I’ve ever done.
It was only headaches.
It was more expensive.
It was more stressful.
My mental health went to shit.
Like it was honestly the worst thing I’ve ever done.
And I did that for a solid three years or four years or something in the end because I thought I wanted to commit to that.
The moment, well I wanted to give up for a start, but the moment I transitioned back and I was like screw this, I would down and become a lifestyle business, I was so much happier.
And I just think you have to do what’s right for you and all I ever wanted was to create a company where people were happy to come to.
They enjoyed it as much as you can enjoy work.
Like they enjoyed being part of a team.
It was small, that liked each other, enjoyed each other’s company much like I’m trying to do with NOBS.
Like you know you were just so happy to be and support each other and I want everyone to earn a decent amount of money, us to make enough profit, and all of us to have decent lifestyle and not be stressed at night.
Work with nice customers, call it whatever you want to call it.
Like I said, but that’s what I wanted.
I don’t care if it’s called an agency or not and I just don’t see what’s wrong with that.
Oh I mean I feel your pain.
I feel your pain.
I think my darkest times through running an agency have often been when I’ve had a coach but they’re not a coach.
They’ve never stepped foot into qualifying as a coach.
They’re an adviser and advisers talk about what worked for them.
And you know the only thing you can be sure of is that you are not the same as me and what lights you up will not light me up.
Some bits might be the same but our context is completely different, our skills as well as our strengths.
And when as soon as you offer advice to someone or word you deviate them from their path and it is so profound the damage and the impact that can cause.
And it can really really set you off on a sort of you know off course as it sounds like it has to you and I’m so sorry.
You know it is and that’s so much of my passion in what I do now.
You know I now coach agencies.
I do not advise them.
You know occasionally I will, you know I qualify as a coach adviser.
I will very occasionally if it’s something about a P&L say something like have you thought about that or what about this.
But as soon as I’ve offered that my next word is does that resonate with you.
Does that make any sense.
And I go straight into asking questions.
It’s like it is and it’s so powerful how if I’ve ever tempted to give a word of advice, if I just hold myself back you know and actually ask some more questions and dig deeper and look at what you’re not saying, what you say as your advice to yourself is so much more profound, so much more on point, so much more in line with your values and journey than anything I could ever say.
And my heart breaks every time a little bit for the cash that you know, for the money I was spending on people to coach me and instead were just knocking me off.
You know I had a coach for years.
I’d literally come out and cry because I felt so low about what I was achieving.
And I used to think you know I said that to her and and and she was like oh, she was actually quite concerned.
But I was like no it’s great.
You know I need to have my ego knocked down a bit.
I need to do this.
Like no I didn’t.
I was doing so well.
But I think you know we’ve through school, through the way we’ve been brought up, like we think that we need to focus on what we’re not good at.
Absolute it is bullshit.
You know what we need to do is focus on the few things that we do really well, excel on those and then pull back from the stuff we don’t do well.
And that’s why an agency is great at its heart.
If you’re able to go I do these things amazingly, they do those, and we work as a team.
You know and between all of us we’ve really got, you know that is a proper awesome agency.
And that’s when I get really passionate about agencies and like steering people there.
So I would like to then discuss because I think what you said resonates and it’s really scary actually because I feel like companies get to a certain size and then they’re like I need advisors.
Yeah.
And you know you’re told and because this is the way that every business runs, you’re told to get a board, get advisors and whatever.
And like you said they destroy businesses and I know so many..

Companies have had a board of advisers and they’ve been awful.
Yeah.
So I would like to just touch on coaches versus mentors versus advisors because they’re
sort of so murky and people just interchange all three of those words as the same thing but they are so different
and what they should be getting out of you is very very different so I’d love to talk on the differences because you’re a qualified coach so coaching what is coaching versus what is
mentoring versus what is advice and who should be getting what.
Brilliant.
So such
a good question and one that needs to be sweated a bit more actually. So I did a course specifically in this to really check it out because so and so I’d say a coach first of all is
someone who does not proffer advice. You know they are there to deep listen, hold
space and they could have loads of experience, often they would have a load of experience in your area but not necessarily but they would ask you questions and there’s lots of different styles of coaching as there are sort
of psychological therapy and there’s a connection between the two.
There quite a lot of research and you know scientific backing in the same that there is in psychological counseling. Very clear line between what is counseling, what is therapy
but they’re really only there to ask you questions and to ask the right question and to notice you know and they might say things like I noticed you grabbed
your throat when you spoke about that, tell me about that a bit more or I noticed when you answered that you didn’t mention this you know.
So they
might be drawing your attention to things, they might, but they are never saying I think you need to do this. You
know they are really really drawing out from you, you know your best self and they might be aligning you with your values,
they might be aligning with your goals. The fundamental thing about coach is always forward-looking you know because of therapy. I think a lot that you know
what coaching is about is about where are you going and you know you can do some of that is like GROW which is
very sort of in the body noticing where you’re feeling things. Some of it is like just very functional, like what are your goals, what’s the reality,
opportunity, way forward um so lots of different models but good coaches are able to use a whole range of different models interchangeably depending on what
the situation is.
So the important thing is all coaches are accredited so there’s two bodies, the EMCC and the ICF and
you have to keep up your registration, you have to pay, you have to have a mentor, you have to you know write up your notes after every session, you need
to then put those through with people. It’s a very you know it is an accredited profession, well it should be anyway.
But then 90% of the coaches on Instagram for example.
Exactly.
You know and I think that’s the thing because coaching came from like sports coaching perhaps and a
lot of things have, we didn’t necessarily need a qualification really. If you are going to pay for a coach you need to make sure they’re
accredited because they can cause an enormous amount of harm and you should contract with them very carefully at the beginning around all of that.
And would
you say that those two bodies, I’ll write those note in the show notes, would you say to go to those websites, look up their names and make sure they’ve got
their accreditation before engaging with them?
They should have, they should send you over their professional registration, absolutely. I mean it doesn’t
necessarily mean that they’re going to be an amazing coach for you. Yeah definitely work on like recommendations in your network, talk around to people,
have a conversation with someone first and the interesting thing is I think if I reflect on all the coaches I’ve had that are amazing in my career and
sometimes the one that you don’t necessarily have the most chemistry with can be the best one.
Yeah.
So you know sometimes you might
be naturally drawn to someone really similar to you. We are drawn to those. Sometimes a coach who’s a little bit different than you can also bring out a whole new range of skills. So really align the coach you’re looking for with what you want to become and
really like make sure you really question them and really clear on how many sessions you’re signing up for, what the notice period is, what the way to get
out is because often some coaches still also have these quite like lengthy relationship, you know, way getting in and out.
I’m more than happy to talk about this to anyone who’s interested because it’s something I’m so passionate about now.
Now, an advisor, anyone can be an
advisor, okay. So you don’t need any formal qualification as is. What you would look for is you know I think the number one
rule of advice is don’t take advice from anyone you don’t want to be like.
So if you’re
looking at somebody for advice make sure that you really want to follow in their footsteps because that’s where it’s going to take you and it might not even do that because they could be talking about something they did under a set of circumstances five years ago with a totally different skill set. So I would say with advice sometimes it can be
more helpful to get someone who’s quite similar to you.
Yeah.
So if you’ve got similar strengths to someone, if you’ve got similar knowledge,
that could be helpful or you know you can get legal advice, just you know and there’s advisers where someone says I think you should do this. The really
important thing about advice is just to take it lightly you know and I think if I ever offer someone advice I
don’t offer it to them like I give them a nice glass of chardonnay or you know like here you go, try this, enjoy this. I also would offer them a lukewarm glass of water I’ve just poured out the tap. Take it, don’t take it, I don’t care. Like that’s the best way to offer advice I think. Really what’s far more important after you’ve offered advice is to say you know what do you
think about that? What does that mean to you? If I was to say to you Sabrina, you know I think you should get another advisor and then rather than me going I
really want the ego trip of you going wow that’s great advice, the best advisers would say what does that spark up for you when I say that,
you know. And I think if you combine advice and coaching that way it’s really powerful because you might go that’s the last thing I wanted. That’s really
interesting, far more interesting than you going thanks Holly for letting me know that.
So if you’re ever getting an advisor make sure it’s done like a
loop one.
Like I get the difference between coaching and advising now but mentoring I think should be a little bit both right?
Oh no actually
what I can say, mentoring is more like, for my determination, coaching is asking questions, like advice is suggesting
something, mentoring is talking about your experience right and saying this is what I did.
Absolutely.
So I think coaching is about inquiry, curiosity, deep listening at its heart,
deep listening to try and uncover what’s going on for you below the surface and try and pull through that in
the forward direction that you want to go to. Advice, yeah suggestions, things that you can choose like a box
of chocolates you can choose from. Now I would say mentoring is perspective, you know. So mentoring is, it could be
reverse mentoring, it could be you getting a glimpse through their eyes and also in a way, you know that
person is still, whether they’re coming, you know if I was mentoring you, all you’re doing is having a chance to look through my eyes and I
would say what can I see from my, what do I remember from there. It’s like storytelling and sharing really and I think that is phenomenally powerful.
You know I think how we’re showing stories and caring about each other here. Mentoring I definitely think has a more caring element sometimes, like I care that you see my perspective, I care that I share my perspective with you.

I think mentoring is so, so powerful and I actually believe that anyone can get mentoring.
Yeah.
Whereas I feel like the other ones are a little bit different.
And I want to cover this because I feel like almost anyone can get a mentor.
I think everyone should get a mentor, and I just think that it’s so beneficial to everyone.
But it’s really hard to find the right mentor.
So talking through again coaching, advisory, and mentoring, because I think that lots of people now are on a bit of a self-development journey.
They want to learn more.
They actually want to learn more, they don’t know which one to get and when and why, for what reasons.
So can we have a look again, a bit of guidance here?
Because I feel like people are going, “I’d love to have a mentor, but actually no, I need a coach, or wait, do I need an advisory board?”
Like, what do people need at which stages, do you think?
Great question.
And you don’t need to limit yourself to having one.
But I definitely think you need to have the energy to commit fully to whichever one you have.
I would say coaching and mentoring are more long-term.
I think you can get in and out of advice, and it should be seen as that.
You can go and get some advice and then you can take it or leave it.
Obviously, people often have long-term advisors that give them very wise counsel, and that is a long relationship where they understand a lot about the business.
So it’s not to say that advice is short-term, but I think there’s definitely a level of commitment, possibly on the other two sides, that’s necessary to get the value out a bit.
Yeah.
So that’s a really great question.
I think coaching can help you unlock things.
Coaching is more internal.
So I think if you are feeling like the issue is you, and actually you’re holding yourself back, then coaching is really helpful if you want to unpick yourself.
I think advice is more external.
So it’s much more like, “How do I change my environment?”
“How do I navigate this tricky situation?”
“How do I look at this new context?”
I need more external influences in.
And I think mentoring is more, again, probably a mixture between the two depending on where it is.
I think if you’re getting mentoring from the perspective of people below you in the business, that’s super valuable.
If you’re getting mentored by somebody in a role one or two levels above you, that’s really helpful to see how they see your role and what they do to get there.
And they might help you unpick a little bit of the problems you’re having.
A really sophisticated mentor starts getting more into coaching.
Yes.
Definitely.
Yeah.
I think when I was running my business towards the end, I felt like I had this constant feeling that I was steering a ship with a broken arm.
So every time I was trying to steer it, I’d rebreak the arm.
I had this really strong metaphor.
And I think for me, coaching was really helpful to start unpicking that and give myself permission to explore what a future might be like.
Actually, I did about two years’ worth of coaching before I sold my agency.
And my coach at the end of it was like, “I think you need therapy.”
So that was quite helpful as well and took me on that journey beyond there.
But it really shone a light on some of the things that I had quite entrenched within me that I don’t think, without her coaching, I would ever have started to unpick.
So yeah, I think coaching can just be completely transformational.
I think that, for me, when I think about it, coaching helps you because you’re asking questions, right?
So it helps you discover something about yourself.
Like you said, it’s internal.
So I feel like it’s a bit of a self-discovery thing.
And then advice, like you said, is almost like, “I’ve got this problem, how do I solve it?”
And then mentoring is almost inspirational.
So I feel like it’s kind of nice like that.
That’s how I would see it, at least.
It’s a really lovely summary.
Really lovely explanation by you, Sabrina.
I think coaching as well, it’s important to realize that some of the best coaches might have absolutely no experience in your industry.
And that’s much more organic.
I think they’re just going to keep peeling the layers until they find the bit underneath.
Yeah.

And you said that you did a couple of years of coaching then before you sold your agency, and I definitely want to talk about this because I feel like, like we were saying on Adam’s episode of the podcast, he was talking about selling his agency.
Every time I’ve spoken to someone now about selling their agency, it’s not as it seems.
And I know that, like I said, when I was undergoing this, I don’t know what that was, advice, coaching, whatever that guy was doing, like they were telling me that this is what I need to do in my agency.
And so much of agency world is all about the exit.
And I know there’s a lot with other businesses as well.
Like I guess in fintech it’s quite a big thing, you want to sell your business.
But tell me through your journey because I feel like you also didn’t necessarily enjoy it and it was a very tough time.
So talk me through, I guess, why you wanted to do it and then what happened.
Yeah, thank you.
So I think I remember this LinkedIn post I wrote as an article when I got to 10 years.
And I was, you know, I have been planning this sort of, I was, well I thought I really need to celebrate turning 10 years and I could not find it in me what to celebrate.
I was so down on myself and the agency.
And I feel really guilty.
Like I had a brilliant team, we were turning over great profit, we had great clients.
I think I just had no drive in me to celebrate.
I just couldn’t.
I didn’t feel proud of myself at all.
And I was just.
Actually what was really helpful, I went to a networking event, you know, we sit down, have lunch, and this guy was up at the front talking about male mental health and how that was such a problem.
I could feel myself getting enraged about it.
And this woman took me off afterwards.
She had built and sold an agency and she said to me, “You’re burnt out.”
At the time no one said that word and I didn’t really know what it meant.
And I googled it a bit and I suddenly thought, “Oh God.”
I just had no passion.
Something I used to be so passionate about.
Couldn’t make a decision.
And then I had bought in a managing director with this view that, you know, they’re incredibly talented, from a really successful brand.
And we just clashed.
I just couldn’t work out what she was about.
And I felt quite exposed because actually I think I was pretty burnt out at that time and I couldn’t give her what she wanted.
And so when she left, it was just like, you know, oh God.
I sort of had nothing left in the tank.
So what I did realize at that time as well is, you know, I had loads of other stuff going on in my history that sort of made more sense to why I felt like that.
But I was just, you know, I had two little kids.
I’d had no maternity leave.
And I was just kind of done.
So look, I was thinking, you know, rather than just taking two weeks off, which probably would have been quite helpful.
Actually, so I was then looking for solutions.
And I went out and met with somebody I knew who ran an agency.
One led to another and she suggested that she buy my agency.
Then we went into negotiations and that all happened quite quickly.
So I think, you know, I was completely unable to see at that point.
I think now I coach other agencies, I’m like wow, we were so profitable.
We had loads of money in the bank.
We had great clients.
Some of them were on three-year locked-in contracts, like government contracts.
And I just couldn’t see how good things were.
It’s interesting.
I did have a coach then.
He was really powerful.
But I think as well she was stymied by the fact she only asked questions.
Actually an advisor and some more advice would have been helpful.
But sometimes you just navigate with what you have.
And because I think the agency was in such a good position, we very quickly went into a sales arrangement.
I actually started to get other offers when people found out I was selling, but I was just like, “I can’t face it. Get me out. Get me out.”
And I think, you know, I now really like founders who are at that point of “get me out of here” because there are so many better options than selling.
Often selling is the worst option if you’re feeling burnt out.
You are frying pan to fire.
You’ve then got two years of an earnout working for somebody else.
If you thought you had problems when you’re running your own agency, you’ve got no idea what you’re going in for when you’re then bought out and working for someone else, with a whole new senior team.
And I think there should be a checklist really of things to think through logically and clearly before you go into a sales conversation.
A lot of people go into entrepreneurship because they are terrible employees.
They are mavericks.
They are people who like doing it their own way.
Probably have loads of ADHD.
They probably are neurodiverse.
And they probably have, you know, I loved how Adam put it, “massive egos and low self-esteem,” okay.
Which was definitely my issue, plus ADHD.
Plus at the point I was going through premature menopause at 38, which completely made my ADHD, which was undiagnosed but was sort of manageable, go off the charts.
And from the moment that paper was signed and the other agency bought my agency, it was like every negative thought I had about myself or I’d heard from anyone else went on stereo blast around me.
I’ve never thought I had anxiety.
It’s a bit like, you know, I remember someone saying on a podcast, “A squirrel doesn’t know it’s cute.”
I think I always had this level of self-regulation and policing that was anxiety, but I never would have identified with that.
Suddenly that was like an echo chamber.
I remember, you know, I suddenly felt so responsible for these people I was bringing into the agency.
We didn’t merge as well as we hoped.
And all of these things needed enormous energy from me.
I didn’t sleep for two weeks.
When people say they don’t sleep and they mean they had a fragmented night, I literally walked around the house awake like a mad woman for two weeks without sleeping.
All I could hear was the agency owner saying things like, “They’re whip-smart.”
And I was like, “They’re going to find out I’m not whip-smart. They’re going to realize it’s all fake.”
Actually, they’d done all their due diligence.
Everything was fine.
I won a massive contract for them in the first week.
In fact, in the first three days that the agency bought me, I was in bed with what I thought was norovirus.
I was absolutely exhausted.
And I remember writing my press release PR week while vomiting.
It was this anxiety reaction to the sale.
Never had anything like it.
It was absolutely horrendous.
And I still to this day don’t really understand why.
I think, listening to the podcast with Adam, he sort of got that it was like my ego was that business.
I was selling myself.
And suddenly I didn’t have all of this armor that had been that business.
I felt like you could see me for who I was.
And I didn’t have that play park of a business to obsess about, play with my P&L, do these things, make these changes.
And it’s about who I was really as a professional, as a PR professional, not as an entrepreneur anymore.
When I was stripped of that role of entrepreneur, I was devastated.
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