Coach FEATURE: Meet Ruby McGuire, Fearless Visibility Diva, aka Queen of Connection

Ruby McGuire, Visibility Diva, aka Queen of Connection

I love featuring our fellow coaches! It's a great way to build community and learn more about people coaching and also doing great work! This month we're featuring a popular coaching tools author from our blog - we thought you might like to get to know a few of our writers. A big thank-you to Ruby for agreeing to be this month's coach feature.

About Ruby McGuire:

Visibility Strategist | Trainer | Speaker | Co-Author - MCIPD, ASC, NLP Coach & Practitioner, EFT Practitioner & Time Line Therapist

From: Newbury, Berkshire, UK

Business name: Rock Your Fabulous Biz

Describe your coaching business in one sentence: I'm a Visibility Strategist; I help service-based solopreneurs become fearless in their business, get connected, visible and profitable.

Meet Ruby:

QUESTION 1: What one book should every coach read - and why?

Ooh, what a tough question. I run a coaching book club so we're reading coaching/business books all the time. I would say The One Thing by Gary Keller, because when we run our own business we're always trying to do waaaaay too much. This book helps you get much better results, and stop stressing yourself out, by just focusing on ONE single thing at a time.

If I was allowed a second book, it would be The 12-Week Year 😉 It's a brilliant way to stay focused on what's truly important to you, and you get four New Years in each 12-month period. Four opportunities to celebrate success!

QUESTION 2: Which website do you visit the most?

I think it would probably be Pinterest. I use it for both work and fun. It's a fab way to get creative on both aspects, and it's pretty too. What's not to like?!

QUESTION 3: Whom do you admire most?

Denise Duffield-Thomas, she's running a multi-million dollar business. She has lots of fabulous tips to share about money, she adds a bit of woo to her business (spirituality around manifesting/law of attraction) plus she comes across as very genuine.

QUESTION 4: What's your vision for your life? Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Living in Scotland with my hubby and our little dog, surrounded by hills, in our Victorian villa. Our grown up daughter is on the way to finishing her veterinary qualification at Uni and is a fully qualified vet. Her, and my two stepdaughters, are all really happy and content in their lives. I'm running a super-successful global business, travelling the world for speaking gigs and with my hubby, a published author with lots of books to my name. I'm also doing all of the things I love; I'm being really creative, hosting lots of dinner parties and games nights with my amazing friends and family.

Because my business is so successful, I'm able to give back to help the homeless, which is something I really want to get involved in.

QUESTION 5: What are your Top 3 Goals at the moment?

1. I'm working on revamping my Rock Your Visibility Bootcamp. It's an online programme that's been running a couple of years now. I want to add in lots of juicy transformational content to it to make it even better.
2. I'm increasing my own visibility through speaking gigs, so if you know of anyone that wants a speaker to talk about fear and visibility then send them my way 🙂
3. I'm writing my book. I've co-authored some chapters of a book in the past, but now it's time to write just as me.

QUESTION 6: What has been your favourite coaching moment so far?

It has to be the Sassy Ladybird session! My client had come to me, feeling lots of fear around her business, and doubted every move she was making. She was stressing about people unsubscribing from her list, worrying about what people thought of her, how to grow her group and build her business, and whether she had the ability to even run a business.

We did some NLP "Perceptual Positions" work together, where you view a situation from different perspectives. One of those perspectives is from the viewpoint of a tiny little fly high up on a wall (I've changed that to a little ladybird – who wants to think of a fly? Yuk!).

She had such funny imagery of her little ladybird where she was turning her back on her. It had a little hat, umbrella under her arm and was giving her loads of sass, and she was pretty much telling her to stop her nonsense and just get on with it already! At one point the little ladybird even had her bag packed, her little umbrella folded up and was tutting at her, saying she always wanted to run before she could walk!

The big learnings were that there is no value in trying to sabotage herself, that she could use the tools she works with on her own clients to help her, that she needs to keep the lines of communication going with clients that leave, not just 'close the door' on them and take it personally, and to check in with them at a later date. She said she was going to relax in her group and enjoy it more, seeing people leaving as an opportunity to bring in more.

She'd started with an intense rating of 7 of fear and it reduced to zero in the space of 45-minutes, with her feeling on top of the world, and ready to take on anything. It was such a massive transformation from where we'd been at the start of the session. NLP and Time Line Therapy get such amazing results – I love it!

QUESTION 7: What are your Top 3 favourite coaching tools and/or resources?

1. Well for those that read my post last month, I LOVE the 3-month Business Plan (Editor's Note: We've RE-added a link to the free .pdf tool here) that The Coaching Tools Company gave away as a "5 Years in Business Gift" a few years ago. I'm not just saying it to get brownie points - I use it all the time, it helps get my head clear on what my next step is.
2. Asana, a project management tool, I use it daily for client work, managing my business and my life. It's easy to keep track of everything in one place. I have links to my website for ease, all of the projects I'm working on, things I'm working on with my VA's, my CRM (Client Relationship Management) and more. I can honestly say I've never been as organised, and as a Virgo that's saying a lot!!
3. Pomodoro Timer – (For those that don't know – the Pomodoro Technique is a method where you work in 25-minute blocks. After each 25 minutes you take a 5-minute break, and after every 4 Pomodoros you take a 15-minute break) It is SO easy to get distracted with lots of shiny objects, new Facebook Lives to watch, new blog posts to read, and then our own business things to do as well. I love to challenge myself to work to a timer. The Pomodoros help you feel like you've accomplished loads and get you really focused. (That coupled with The One Thing method – can you tell I get distracted easily now?!)

QUESTION 8: What do you love most about being a coach?

The biggest thing for me is helping people get clarity. They come to my sessions all super confused with a million and one ideas, not knowing what to focus on, or feeling super scared about getting out there and being visible, and I love helping them simplify everything, getting those clarity a-ha moments and then leaving with a plan of action.

QUESTION 9: Tell us a secret about you...

I love the Clarice Bean series of children's books written by Lauren Child. She uses lots of adjectives like 'totally' and 'utterly' to describe things and makes up words like 'exceptionordinarily', which makes me giggle. Clarice is quirky, a little bit dramatic and where she's a child she views life differently, saying things like, "But would you rather know someone who knows how to jump out of a helicopter without getting a twisted ankle? Or know someone who can spell grapefruit?" I read so many personal/business development books; this is a bit of light relief for me.

QUESTION 10: If you could change one thing in our world, what would it be? And how would you go about it?

This goes back to my 5-year goal. I would help the homeless. I believe that life does throw us challenges, and they are different for each and every one of us. Everyone on the planet should have somewhere they can call 'home'. We shouldn't have the level of poverty we have in this day and age. (Getting off my soapbox now!)

I'd love to get lots of coaches together to help the homeless get back on their feet and build a new life they love. Ideally I'd love to build some way to help them set up their own businesses, so they would feel incredibly empowered and have a legacy they can leave behind. Interestingly, I had a client with a very similar idea and it fuelled my passion again to make this part of my bigger plan. They say you attract what you're meant to work on. Maybe we'll end up teaming up on it one day, who knows!

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