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We've got too much stuff.

Like we can go onto Google, we can find everything.

But if we do not know a way forward for us, if we don't feel it, if we're not motivated, if we're not engaged, we'll never do it.

And we both know that.

And I think it's even worse if you're neurodivergent.

If this doesn't sit right with you, you won't do it, will you?

Yeah.

And there's nothing that's going to change that.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I have a real beef about this.

Hey, gorgeous, how are you?

It's Sara here, host of the Start over podcast, and I am immensely pleased to bring you today a very special guest.

Ruth Cudsey is the founder of Optimus Coaching Academy and so many other things which you will find out very shortly.

But I wanted to get her onto the podcast because last year I decided, having coached, and I'll admit, obviously I mixed it with mentoring and changing.

But having coached for many, many years in many different capacities, I made a little bit of a commitment to myself in that I knew my future, my future very much.

I really wanted to have a coaching element into it.

And I tend to be an all or nothing kind of person.

Becoming ICF accredited, ICF is, the international Coaching Federation was really important to me and it was important to me because I wanted to prove to myself that a, I could do it, that I could be good at it.

But I also wanted to put that message out there that I was behind this as an industry.

And as this industry grows, I see more and more need for it to be regulated.

And so I'm on board with that.

So my experience with Optimus was really fantastic.

The coaching I received, the training I received, the in depth, the knowledge and the fact that it's backed by so much research made it a really, really good experience for me.

And I'm often asked about it.

So I thought, let's get Ruth on.

And she very happily accepted my invitation and came on.

So.

So who is Ruth?

Well, as I said, she's the founder of Optimus coaching Academy and she's very well respected and a very successful coach.

She's a speaker, she's an author, and she's worked across sectors including leadership career and more recently, business and mindset.

She is ADHD, the same as me.

She has lots of fun.

She's so experienced.

She's got over 10,000 coaching hours and has completed hundreds of hours of training and coaching supervision.

Ruth is at the top of the game.

She is MCC level.

Prior to becoming a coach, she was a senior leader in education.

And part of our conversation is how she came to do what she's doing now.

And it's a great example.

Not only is she giving us some really good information about coaching and so on, but her start over story, her evolution, you know, the number of startovers that she's had, just flows so beautifully.

And the whole point of this particular episode is to show you that if you decide that you want to become a coach, then I'm putting my neck out here and saying it really is one of those professions where you are never starting from scratch with what you will be offering.

And coaching is one of those things.

It's ongoing.

I know she is very dedicated to it.

I certainly am as well, that if it's something that you love, you are constantly evolving and up leveling your skills.

Do go and check out the show notes, because Ruth is offering a five day taster session extravaganza and it's a great way for you to just go and check it out for free.

There'll be some sessions that you'll be able to take part in and you'll find out an awful lot more about what's involved in becoming a coach.

Anyway, without further ado.

So let's dive into the interview.

Here is Ruth.

I would say that, I guess I'm an entrepreneur.

I've had my own businesses for over eight years now, and I run a coaching business, a training business called Optimus Coach Academy.

And I also run kind of a third business where I support people to create their own courses and accreditations.

So that's what I do now.

But I'd also say there's a strong theme of being an educator that runs through.

Through everything that I do.

And that was my background, gosh, for about 20 years now.

So when you say things, you're like, oh, actually it's quite a long time.

So entrepreneur and educator with a focus on training, coaching and development.

You're also an author?

I'm also a best selling author.

Twice best selling author, actually.

And podcaster and youtuber, an international speaker and what else?

There's probably so many different.

I'm a mother of two children, I just said, have been ordered not to come in here because it is currently in school holidays.

Yeah.

So lots of different labels, for sure.

It's probably about eight years since I first came across you, and then more recently I went through your coaching training and became certified coach.

So can we start?

Can we start there?

Because I think that's you know, if somebody is interested in becoming a coach, that's a big area, you know, it's quite a big move, isn't it, to commit to the level of training?

Why would anybody want to train to be a coach?

Oh my gosh, I say, why would anyone not want to?

I think, and this is really interesting because this goes back to probably about twelve years ago, maybe a little bit longer, when I was working as a senior leader and I had done loads of short courses and I remember going to, this is back pre Covid.

They used to run these kind of one or two day things in London that were free and they did them all over these like Manchester and other places, tea that you go to and they'd be introduction to coaching diplomas.

And I remember going to one, I went to loads and I went to one.

I said to my husband, I think I'm going to sign up and it was like six k, I think.

And I was like, I'm going to sign up and I'm going to share this.

And I rarely share this, but I didn't have six k sitting in my bank account.

I did use my credit card, but I was like.

And I said to him, I really feel like I want to be a coach.

I want to take this seriously.

And he said, and this is so unlike my husband, he said, well, it's an investment in you.

Whatever happens, it's an investment in you.

And I really believe that.

I believe that if we, because it's a personal development thing as well as a professional qualification, you're going to get that investment back.

Now, that doesn't mean you're going to get that investment back the day that you start the course or even for some people the year after.

But you will get that back again and again and again, both financially but also in yourself.

Because when you go through, and you know this, when you go through training to be a coach, you are coached and you have to go to those places that we all avoid, right?

We all avoid them.

You have to go there because you can't hold space and be there for someone else if you haven't gone through that journey.

So I think it really is.

Why would anyone not want to now, of course, it may not be the right time for everyone to train to right now.

I was talking to somebody who runs another training school, actually, and I was saying to them, if we all try, if everybody had these skills, the world would be a much better place because we'd have higher levels of emotional intelligence, we'd have, you know, we'd understand ourselves better.

Now, that doesn't mean that every single person needs to be a coach.

No, but it means that if everyone had those skills, they'd be better leaders, they'd be better parents, they'd be better in relationships.

Again, that doesn't mean that your relationship is going to last forever.

It doesn't mean you're going to have riches forever, but it means that you're going to have those inner resources.

So, yeah, that's my very cheesy response is that.

Why wouldn't you?

I don't think that's cheesy at all.

I agree.

I think there are certain things that, you know, many people have in themselves anyway.

They just don't necessarily recognize it as coaching.

It wasn't until I first started coaching because, I mean, I sort of fell into coaching.

But when I think about it, I was coaching from a really early age because I came from a sales background.

I came out fresh with my business studies degree and I joined a publishing, a great publishing house and we had fantastic training.

And of course, coaching kind of comes through there and then as I progressed and I was training other people and so on.

You are?

We're coaching all the time and as parents, we're coaching all the time.

But we don't necessarily label it, do we?

As I'm going to make sure I coach the kids today, that doesn't happen.

But of course we are.

We're asking them about how they feel about that and when they've got decisions they've got to make and so on.

We do that.

But I have to say that I think the neuroscience element of it so excites me some of the things that we went through in the training, because again, I didn't realize how much of that it was of an interest to me.

I mean, I read up loads about it.

But to then be able to use that in the coaching field as well is.

I find that really exciting because we're backed by science now.

Yeah, I think a lot of people are like, well, coaching is just talking about stuff, but actually it's proven that by pulling out these things, it's scientifically backed that we can change our brains.

And you know what?

We didn't even know that properly.

Like when I studied psychology in the nineties, we didn't like it was still case studies.

We didn't talk about brain scanning.

And I remember actually going to doing a postgrad in coaching.

And I remember them like talking about how they scanned brains and they've seen this and they've seen like some of Freud's work was actually like his theories had got evidence to support them.

And I remember being like so excited and calling, I think I called like my husband again or my mom and be like, oh my gosh, this is amazing.

And they're like, whatever, Ruth.

I'm really glad that you're so excited, Ruth, but this isn't really like floating our boat.

And I was like, I get it, I get it.

But I, but it's so interesting, isn't it?

Because I feel like we're in a real change around the way that we work and everything else.

We know there's big podcasts like, obviously Steve Bartlett, but runs and Chatterjee that are talking a lot about things like the impact of stress on the brain, the impact of stress on decision making.

Actually studies about if your employees are happy, they perform better.

And we never used to have this, did we, when we were working, it was kind of that work hard, play hard, you know, presenteeism.

I remember working twelve hour days and having to be at my desk and not go to the toilet during, I worked in recruitment during like the lunch hour.

So I think it was like twelve to two, you weren't allowed to go to the toilet.

And now we're realizing that that wasn't very helpful.

Now when we reflect back, we know that we were like rebelling against it anyway.

We're like, well, I'm going to try and go to the toilet or two hits.

I'm going to.

I used to like, I used to smoke at work.

I never used to smoke.

I used to smoke at work because I get a break.

I mean, when you think about all of that behavior, you're like, yeah, it does make sense.

And isn't it interesting that our brains have known this all along?

Yeah, absolutely.

So let's dive into a little bit more of what.

If somebody's thinking about it, what do they really need to understand about what a coach does?

Yeah.

So I think that there's coaching as a generic term and we see so many people online who are coaches and some of them are mentors and some of them are strategists and they're great.

But actually, when we're looking at coaching, it works in the premise, the person that has got the answers inside.

So as a coach, our role is to help them get a new insight, to create a new neural pathway around what they think, feel and do.

So our goal is to really deeply listen and help people to see themselves more clearly and see a path through.

And it's so funny because when people come into coaching, they think, oh, our coach and mentor.

And I actually do coach a mentor and they think the mentoring is a really valuable bit because I can tell people everything that I know.

Yeah.

Like that's the, that's the world that we live in.

I can tell people all these things that we know, but it never is because we can find, oh, yeah, we've, we've got too much stuff.

Like we can go onto Google, we can find everything.

But if we do not know a way forward for us, if we don't feel it, if we're not motivated, if we're not, you know, engaged, we'll never do it.

And we both know that.

And I think it's even worse if you're neurodivergent that if this doesn't sit right with you, you won't do it, will you?

Yeah.

And there's nothing that's going to change that.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I have a real beef about this.

I've spoken about it before and I used to have a mug, you know, when I was helping people create online courses, I used to have a mug in my advertise, you know, my promotional picture that had just do it on it.

And for years and years and years I would say I just got to do it and then it wasn't, then I'd be like, why am I not doing it, though?

I know I want to do it.

I know I've just got to do it, but why am I just not doing it?

And it was really, really sort of emotionally painful and very frustrating.

And then, strangely enough, after I got my diagnosis, my ADHD diagnosis, like, ah, that means it's a real thing that you just can't do it sometimes.

But the key to unlocking why you can't just do it and the neurodivergent brain, I love it.

I'm so grateful that it's very frustrating, but the more I get to know my own brain, the more exciting it becomes because you start to work out how to unlock these things and then if it feels right, my impulsive and there's no stopping me side suddenly kicks in and then I can just do it.

So, yeah, it's amazing how we can have so many things unlocked.

And I think I've never had so much coaching as when I went through your course.

And it's so true when you are learning to coach at that next level, to receive that much coaching as well, is just so, so valuable.

I mean, I've had good coaches before and I'll be honest, I've had some terrible ones as well.

You know, I'm not going to lie.

I don't.

You know, the reason I wanted to get certified was for my own personal reasons.

But as the market is changing, I think there's more and more of a need for regulation.

Definitely.

But for me it was.

I really wanted to really hone my skills and take it to the next level because I knew how much it had helped me and I wanted to make sure, you know, it's another ADHD thing.

If I'm going to do it, I want to be really good at it.

Yeah.

So that's.

I'm either all in or I'm not in.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I'm either doing this or I'm not really going to do it.

So that was so good.

But yes, to be able to help people unlock those things and sometimes it can be a moment and it's like a massive revelation and then they almost have this.

That one little thing has held me back for 15 years.

But it's true, isn't it?

These little tiny things in our, in the way we think and feel, they aren't necessarily real.

And when we change that, when we help people realize, when we facilitate their realization of this, it is so, so powerful.

Yeah.

I mean, it's life changing.

And I know that sounds really, like, glib, but it really is because what goes on in our internal world is where we spend most of our time.

Yeah.

Not only being able to change for ourselves, but helping others.

And I think, as well, I shared this before, but I think that when you have ADHD, like when you help others, you get dopamine.

And so I think that we make great coaches because we love to help others and then that's reinforced through our dopamine that we're like, oh, this is really good.

Like, I can do this.

I can be really engaged here.

So that's quite interesting as well.

Yeah, I really wanted to do this subject because I think if people are thinking about becoming a coach, you know, we talked about sometimes you have this natural ability that's there with your experience now with the training academy.

What kind of backgrounds do people move from into coaching?

So really, really varied backgrounds.

But I would say the core people that we have between 35 and 55, they are professionals now.

They.

So they, and that might also be business ownership, but maybe they're from HR marketing, education, healthcare, or maybe they've had their own photography business or marketing business.

So they've, they've done something previously and usually they either want to up level in terms of their leadership or they want to have something do something different.

And often that's around purpose, making a difference.

So many of them have experience coaching or they've started to read those self development books or listen to the podcast and they're like, okay, this sounds really interesting.

This sounds like something that I would enjoy, that I'd have purpose with, and it fits with some of my backgrounds.

And this is an interesting thing that they may not realize that straight away because lots of people are like, I don't know, like I'll just give an example.

I've been, I've been working in the NHS for 20 years.

I was a nurse and now I manage people, but I've never done any coaching.

And I'm like, okay, you were a nurse.

Like, how much coaching do you think you actually do as a nurse?

How much deep listening do you do as a nurse?

You know, it's one of the core things that you have.

And even if you're managing nurses, again, when you're leading and managing, you'll be developing coaching skills.

Now you might want to build those further, but they'll be there.

Or someone might say, we were saying before we came on, you said like you had a sales background.

Again, a lot of sales.

It's listening.

Yeah, we're not going to sell if we just sell two people.

When people talk about these really bad sales experiences, it's when it's been done to them.

It's not when they felt, listened to and seen and what they've been said is reflected back.

So again, in sales, it's there.

Hr, we can see it.

More education.

But it's what's interesting, I say a thread is that everybody has had that experience of supporting others and being there for others.

And they may note see it as coaching, but it's been there and that is a common thread and they realize that they enjoy it, they enjoy helping others, they enjoy working with others as well.

Yeah, it's, it's amazing, isn't it, how those, those core skills are, or have been, maybe we should say have been and we need to be banging this drum.

But like they, they have been so underestimated in, in many ways.

Do you know what I mean?

They haven't been seen as a core skill.

Like, you're a good listener, that's a core skill.

To be able to navigate through life in a very successful way, you know, it's an amazing thing.

So obviously this is the start over podcast and I think we've given people a little bit of a taster.

Coaching is such a broad area, but can go into so many niches very beautifully.

What are some of the more unusual niches that you've come across?

Oh, my gosh.

I mean, we know that, like, coaching with neurodivergence is huge now.

So, you know, ADHD coaches are everywhere, it seems, but it only seems because that's the communities that we're in.

But, you know, I've seen people who, who coach parents of newly diagnosed neurodivergent children.

I've seen people who coach people who are coming back from long term sickness.

So that's like a massive thing.

Retirement coaches, menopause coaches, people who specialize only in coaching organizations like bricks and mortar, like estate agents, well being coaches, focusing on purpose, people who coach people on the power of rest, people who only coach the top 1%.

And they're like, really, really hyper focused on that high performance.

I think the thing that I always say is coaching is the skill.

Yeah.

So it's a skill that we can all build and develop.

And as you say, it's like those soft skills you might already have, and then we can put the wrapper on it.

And the wrapper is how we talk about it to our niche.

So that niche is about you and your experience and your story.

They talk about the origin story, don't they?

Like what you're doing and like, you're perfect because the start over coach really links into your experience.

So people are like, ah, okay, I guess it makes sense.

And where I see where it disconnects is where there isn't that clear narrative.

Marketing loves the story.

Marketing loves the narrative.

So I think, you know, when you're thinking about, oh, maybe I'll train as a coach, think about what would make sense given what you've done in the past.

I do love that, you know, they often say, don't they, that, you know, coaching is all about moving forward, which it is.

But I also really like the fact that we can go back and we can go shop for all our good stuff as well.

And when I, when I was starting to pull this theme together with Startover and was suddenly aware of how many start overs I had had and the processes that I'd gone through with, you know, navigating change and being okay with it, I think that's the thing, you know, not being fearful of it, with embracing it, it really suddenly came to light for me.

And I think that's one of my favorite things, is when you start to work with clients on.

Okay, so let's look at all the good stuff.

Stuff.

And when they can start to see the threads.

Oh, my gosh.

I'm not starting this over completely from scratch.

I'm an expert in this particular area because they've been able to spot all the patterns and pull the pieces together.

And I think that's one of the biggest things that when, when we do any retraining of something or training for something for the first time, we automatically, something happens in our brain and maybe I should look into this.

Maybe we should look into this happens in our brains that tell us we are inexperienced, we started from scratch, we mustn't charge too much because we don't really know what we're doing.

And all this.

And none of that is actually true.

When you start to see just where your experience can become your expertise, and it's not just gathering that evidence, but what happens when you gather that evidence.

You find a system or you find a method or you find a blueprint, a pattern, and that gives you the confidence to then go, I can create an online course with this, or actually, this is my USP for my how I coach.

And it's not that you're spouting, telling people what to do, it's just we all need a structure.

Maybe it's just divergence.

We don't like them, but we need them.

Right.

Yeah.

When we are able to have that structure that can show, I guess I'm talking about coaches now and marketing themselves, but that can show other people, oh, they've thought about this.

They do know what this is about.

They can help me in this particular area.

And that's when the magic happens, I think, is when that all collects, it can really help people when they want to develop their coaching business as an example.

Yeah.

And it is like, so I think, I mean, you talk about it so much.

We start over, but it is.

We talked about this before, didn't we, that it's about looking at what you want to put in your suitcase from your past to bring with you and what you're leaving behind.

And sometimes you do that on holiday, don't you, that you're like, oh, my gosh, why did I even bring this swim seat and that really old bottle of suntan lotion?

I'm not going to lug it back again.

That's it.

That's done.

Just leaving that here.

And it's very much the same.

Yeah, it is.

And it's been strange because, as you know, I'm moving house.

Yeah.

And I'm decluttering again.

I've never done as big a declutter as I have recently.

And so much of, I'm going to say, past energy, that hasn't been helping me.

So it's not necessarily bad energy, but, like, I've finally got rid of the final bits of what was kit for my photography business.

And it's been up in my loft.

It was in my loft for years at my, you know, the family home.

And then I've dragged it around with me and I just thought, I need to let this go now.

Because even if I did get back into photography, which, you know, I call it camera porn, I keep finding myself looking at it's not.

It's Kit that's around now.

I'm not going to use any of that, so time to get rid of it.

And it is.

It's identifying what can we take from our past?

I'm packing that because that's great.

And I really want to take that with me on my next journey, you know, moving forward.

And then it's almost like, what are the big bits of elastic that are around those wheels when you're trying to go through the airport with your, you know, what are those bits that are going to pull me back, hold me back, and let's deal with those, you know, let's declutter that.

And it's such a nice sort of visual, isn't it?

Yeah.

So when you took that training course and you decided this was the way forward, what was it from your past, maybe talk a little bit through that, because that's a great example, isn't it, of really seeing what you had in your past that you've been able to take into your businesses as an entrepreneur moving forward.

Yeah.

And really, it's kind of everything.

So if I'm thinking about.

If I'm thinking about what I've done, it's taking, for example, the education piece in terms of the training it's taking.

Before that, I worked in recruitment and sales.

So taking that understanding of sales into everything that I do, taking the team leadership pieces into what I do, although it's so different when you manage it, when it's your own business, I tell you that that was a learning, taking the.

Yeah.

So I'd been doing lots of coaching, so taking that into it, but adding to it.

And then the big thing for me is I've actually been studying psychology for 30 years, so since I was 16, and all of those pieces.

So there are pieces that I did even before my degree, like, say, before my degree when I was 16.

So literally 30 years ago, I remember going to Sheffield University for this, like, five day taster thing and learning all about psychology.

Psychology was rel.

Well, I mean, I.

Relatively new, but still the second most popular degree subject even then.

And I was like, this is this, this is it.

So even from that, I can remember things and this is the thing that there'll be elements.

There's things that I will never use.

Yeah, I will never use my statistics again.

I will never use.

Yeah, I'll never use some of those things that I did in because I did psychology management for my first degree.

But there are things that I'll pick up and I think this is an interesting thing that I didn't know, like, so I left my.

Well, I made a decision nearly nine years ago.

I was going to have my own coaching business and I'd been doing coaching my role.

Right.

I knew that.

I loved that.

I had done training, doing more for a postgrad as well.

And that was like, my first plan was to do coaching.

And then it evolved.

And then the training business, which is now five years old, that's been the real thing.

That has become the main thing.

But that was.

Again, that all makes sense.

Like, the story's there.

It all makes sense.

It took me a while to step into that as well.

So that took me about.

It's been going for five years.

There were two years before that I was talking to my mentor about that, and probably another two years before that that I was thinking about it.

So this is the thing as well, that sometimes it takes time and sometimes you're not ready for that next situation.

But, yeah, it's like a step at a time as well.

And it's having that confidence that that step will be the next step that you need to take.

Yeah, I very much believe that when we get to a place where we know ourselves well enough that we can believe in ourselves and we can trust.

We can trust that we will find a way and that we will know when the time is right.

And I think that's one of the biggest things that I've learned about myself.

And it does allow you to walk into very scary, uncertain situations.

But when you know and you trust in yourself that no matter what's thrown at you, you'll work it out.

It might take you a long time, but you will get that.

And I think if everybody had that, what a different world we would.

We would be living in if we had that kind of trust in ourselves to find.

To find the right way forward.

Yeah, exactly.

It'd be such a different world and such a better world.

I think that if we.

If we just knew, like, we can get through this.

Yeah.

And it's something that I say to myself a lot, like, you can get through this.

Absolutely.

So somebody's out there thinking, okay, maybe it's time for me to get myself certified, do it properly.

Go for it.

How do they find out more about becoming a coach with Optimus?

So we'll drop the links.

And obviously we'll put those links so you can say that you came through Sara, but we run taste sessions.

We run a couple of those a month.

We've got our website, we've got our brochure.

We've got a great quiz where you can see if coaching is right for you.

And we also do workshop weeks, kind of workshop coaching experience weeks, which are like tasters as well.

So we have one at the end of April, at the beginning of, I think at the end of June or beginning of July.

So you can come into those as well.

So all of those links will be there.

So you can just dip into what might be right for you.

And just a final note, with all of the startovers that you have had and the progressions through your career, what would you say is your biggest tip for if someone is looking to start?

Yeah, start over with a new career in coaching?

I think, yes, of course, get the training, but remember that you're not starting from scratch, so remember who you are.

And I know that somebody did a great TikTok on this, but remember who you are and see it as building, not starting.

Yeah.

Fantastic.

Ruth, thank you so much for coming on.

I really enjoyed our conversation.

Yeah, thank you.

So, yeah, I really enjoyed that conversation with Ruth.

She's so lovely and she really is an expert in her field and her passion for coaching and training and all things in supporting people in their development is just.

Wow.

It's second to none, as you can tell.

So do go and check out the show notes.

There's links in there for a five day taster session, which she mentioned during the podcast.

But yeah, if you want some free information, if you want to test out, you know, really find out a little bit more about it.

And as I said earlier, you know, whether that's whether you want to become a coach or just become, you know, have qualified coaching skills that you can integrate either into your personal life, your everyday life, or into the job or the business.

Or if you do want to become a coach, then definitely check it out.

Okay.

So that's all from me other than to say, remember, it's never too late to make a change.

And it's never too early to start over.

You have a fabulous week.

Thank you for joining me, and I'll see you on the next episode.

Bye.