Your Purchase Makes a Difference

Coaching Tools for Your Head, Heart and Business

The Coaching Tools Company is a values-driven business created to help coaches like you save time and energy so you can build your business with more ease and less overwhelm.

Built on Experience

The Founder, Emma-Louise Elsey, is a professionally trained coach and has been coaching since 2003. She was an inaugural ICF (International Coach Federation) Life Vision & Enhancement Community of Practice Co-Leader. The Coaching Tools Company has been an official ICF Business Solutions partner since 2014 and a member of the IAPC&M since 2020.

The coaching landscape has changed dramatically over the last few decades. We strive for authenticity and to serve our industry with tools and resources that truly make a difference to you, your clients and your business.

Example Coaching Tools on Blue Background with Sunflower
ICF Business Partner Logo RECTANGLE White Background

We endeavour to:

Inspire coaches and help spread the positive impact of coaching throughout the world.

Provide helpful, informative and creative tips, tools, resources and ideas for coaches and people who love coaching.

Help coaches get established, grow their client base, hone their skills—and boost their coaching confidence.

Incorporate elements of play and fun into the learning tools coaches can use with their clients.

Our Role In The World

Giving Back to Our Communities

At The Coaching Tools Company we're passionate about mental health. So we support charitable organizations that help the homeless, build mental health and mentor young people to successful lives, as well as charities in related areas close to our hearts.

More recently, as our awareness has grown, we have also begun to support charities that support marginalized populations.

We aim to donate 10% of our profits annually.

An Ad-Free Platform

The world is a noisy place and we have made a conscious choice not to contribute to the distractions. The Coaching Tools Company does not serve ads on its platform (or newsletter) and any affiliate products or services are labelled and disclosed.

Inclusivity at The Coaching Tools Company

Over the last few years at The Coaching Tools Company, we have worked to be more inclusive—with the most obvious efforts being the images we use for our blog posts and around our site. We consult, talk about and have deep conversations with our team about prejudices, blind spots and what's going on in the world. We are continually educating ourselves, and still have a lot to learn.

Specifically we strive to use images of people with a wide variety of skin tones, ethnic origin, body types, ages and (when we find positive images) physical abilities. But many differences are not so visual—who we love, our gender (chosen or birth), and our faith.

Like you, we're a very small business. And we are dedicated to taking the time, energy and effort to think about and act on this information.

Meet our dedicated and always learning team:

The Coaching Tools Company Team June 2022
The Coaching Tools Team! From left to right: Marcus Diaz, Emma-Louise, Natasha Kong and Duncan Elsey.

Our Impact

17 million

pageviews and counting

239 countries

of the 245 countries in the world have visited our website

10%

profits we aim to donate annually

The Journey to The Coaching Tools Company

1994 -2004

After earning a Bachelor's Degree in Business and Information Technology, Emma-Louise worked for big business (Ford Motor Company, NatWest Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland) for 10 years. First she was a Coder, then a Team Leader, Project, Relationship and Release Manager.

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2003

Frustrated by corporate politics (and after 18 months of researching career ideas) Emma-Louise discovered coaching and enrolled at The Coaching Academy. It was a natural shift as she loved leadership and relationship building.

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2003-4

Life coach training with The Coaching Academy in England.

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2004

Moved to Vancouver, Canada.

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2005

Launched Simplicity Life Coaching Ltd. and earned NLP Practitioner designation from Erickson Coaching College, Vancouver.

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2008

Moved to rural Salt Spring Island, Canada. Population 10,500.

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2009

The Coaching Tools Company is born!

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2011

Launched Life Coach On The Go to offer bite-sized tips and tools to help busy people coach themselves.

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2015

The Coaching Tools Company newsletter reaches 10,000 readers!

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2016

One year later we grew to 20,000 readers (and now in 175 countries).

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2017

We reached 30,000 newsletter readers and get listed in the Top 10 Blogs for Coaches

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2018

We reached 40,000 newsletter subscribers.

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2018

Launched the Coaches Helping Coaches FB Group, which currently has nearly 20,000 member coaches.
(Read the group's extremely popular Manifesto here)

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2019

We reach 50,000 newsletter subscribers in over 200 countries around the world!

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2020

The Fierce Kindness blog was launched. Fierce Kindness is a practice, a philosophy and a movement providing inspiring and actionable personal development tools and resources rooted in courage and compassion. Learn more here >>

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The Future...

The Coaching Tools Company continues to serve the coaching community with a new suite of resources and recommendations to help you grow your business as well as your coaching practice.

Meet Our Founder

Hi, I'm Emma-Louise,

I started The Coaching Tools Company.com in early 2009, after 5 years of building Simplicity Life Coaching Ltd. where I coached, wrote articles, newsletters and delivered workshops and retreats. It was here that I learned how hard it is to grow a coaching practice.

I initially set out to create The Coaching Tools Company because I noticed a lack of accessible, affordable resources available to life coaches to grow their business and their coaching toolboxes.

The market for coaching tools and resources has grown substantially over the years. But so many are rooted in "Get clients/make money with my 5-step process" costing thousands of dollars—and more! Instead, I'm dedicated to providing practical tools that life coaches can immediately apply to their businesses.

And I'm also passionate about helping coaches grow their coaching skills and open up conversations about overcoming the hurdles and issues coaches face. For a personal story read Where I am now for Mental Health Day.

Emma-Louise delivering a Confidence Building Workshop using Coaching Forms in 2007.
Emma-Louise delivering a Confidence Building Workshop using Coaching Forms in 2007.

The journey to The Coaching Tools Company was not a short one, nor was it obvious or inevitable. My experiences and failures along the way were crucial to creating a business that makes starting, building, and growing a values-based business easier for all.

When I had worked as a project manager for large corporations, all meetings and work-related documents were systematized and standardized using templates. This saved a lot of time, increased productivity and improved communication. So it was almost inevitable that as a life coach, I would create re-usable forms, tools and exercises for my clients and workshops.

The DNA Board for 2008-9
Emma-Louise (3rd from right) as a Board Member of DNA—a Professional Women's Networking Group in 2009.

But I never imagined that I would start an online business selling coaching tools!

Before moving to Salt Spring I had networked and volunteered extensively and built a fabulous network of connections and friends. It was hard to leave that behind.

So for several years, while I grew The Coaching Tools Company I would also travel back to Vancouver for Conferences and to deliver workshops to get coaching clients.

I also launched Life Coach on the Go! as a personal development website for people to coach themselves in 2012. Which has recently been replaced by Fierce Kindness.

But when we began planning our move to Salt Spring Island (just off the coast of Vancouver) with a population of just 10,500 I knew there wouldn't be enough clients to sustain my coaching business. I began mentioning my coaching tools collection to fellow coaches and therapists and was surprised and delighted to find that people were eager for done-for-you resources.

Emma-Louise at a Women's Conference in 2012
Emma-Louise giving away Coaching Tools at a Women's Conference in 2012
House in 2008
Our house on Salt Spring Island (on 5 acres) as it was when we first moved in!

So gradually, encouraged by friends, colleagues, and clients, I began to believe there was a real need for brandable coaching tools designed to save coaches time, energy and confidence—as well as tools to help grow their clients. In this way I could contribute to the coaching industry—and a better world.

The Coaching Tools Company has since blossomed and grown into a robust business that has helped hundreds of thousands of coaches grow their businesses with our newsletter and both free and paid coaching tools.

As we continue to learn and grow, I love to know that we help coaches feel less overwhelmed, more confident—and that they're not alone!

Slow and Steady wins the Race...

For those of you reading this who wonder if they will ever succeed, see the graph below. It shows the traffic to The Coaching Tools Company from when we launched, and how long it can take to grow your business. Perseverance, determination, hard work and never-ending learning...

You can also see how the website has changed and progressed over the years.

Google Analytics showing DAILY website visits since 2009!

I hope this gives you an insight into The Coaching Tools Company, who we are, how we work and what matters to us.

We would love you to sign-up for our weekly inspirational newsletter or visit the Coaching Tools Catalogue to find out more about the tools we provide.

And don't forget our awesome free coaching tools either!

Emma-Louise signature

Natasha and Emma working together
Natasha and Emma-Louise working together in 2019

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