Rémy Bertoli shares with such honesty about his experience at the International Coaching Certification course and how it helped him get started with his business idea.
The event was not only the beginning of the journey of becoming a professional coach, but also the start – may I say FINALLY a start – of the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey in Finland.
I recommend the course for anyone willing to get their energy level pumped-up, improve their self-awareness and confidence and strengthen their listening skills. Also to people who want to develop techniques to build trust and rapport! Whether your goal is to become a professional coach or not, you’ll learn precious tools that will allow you not only to coach yourself and/or your entourage but to improve your everyday life.
Why I decided to join
It all started at Maria01 which was becoming my second home at the time… I attended weekly events there and at The Shortcut when suddenly my eyes got caught up for this event called “Learn how to coach yourself and ask the right question”. I was just out of a meeting about miscommunication and this event pops out on my Facebook feed. I was really intrigued and curious to know more about it, plus the event was stamped with the label “World Coaching Organization” which gave it a more professional feel. Sometimes the problem with webinars and free events is that you can’t help to wonder what kind of hidden agenda they’re trying to sell to you and if it’s about self-evident things you already know… (I think we’ve all been there!)
At the event I discovered very early on that this would not be the case! It was a short introduction to the actual three-day course but I had the opportunity to meet with Anna-Riikka Hautala, the master coach trainer, among other participants. We learned all the basic principles of coaching in an impressively positive and cheerful atmosphere. When we left the workshop I noticed we all had big smiles – a good sign to attend the full coaching training!
The event was not only the beginning of the journey of becoming a professional coach, but also the start – may I say FINALLY a start – of the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey in Finland. I’ve been dreaming about starting my own business, activity, whatever you want to call it, for years, but always had some roadblocks either in my head or some outside my head. For example, I never really had the time to allocate entrepreneurship alongside my studies or with my full-time job, and thus always ended up postponing it!
After this workshop I approached Anna-Riikka because I couldn’t tag Growthroom (or Kasvuhuone in Finnish) on Twitter. Tweeting is in my nature always when attending events, and I definitely wanted to share my experiences during that workshop but got frustrated because I couldn’t find either the company or the speaker. We clicked right away, then one thing led to another and I ended up selling my services as a Growth Marketing Consultant to Growthroom in order to help them with their digital presence. What a start, right?
In order for me to understand Growthroom’s business, I wanted to attend one of their core services the International Coaching Certification course. Not only would it allow me to help Growthroom with marketing, but the certification would also allow me to look into my own way of working and help me with communication tools and techniques, etc.
What it turned out to be
So I signed up for the full three-day certification and it was THE ULTIMATE ELEVATING EXPERIENCE! I’m not going to spoil you with all the content of the course, but in short I can tell you what NOT to expect from the course, such as: having three days of heavy PowerPoint presentations, falling asleep during the day, having a really theoretical training, being surrounded by boring people,… so hopefully you got it. It is totally the opposite: dynamic, energetic, hands-on sessions, lots and lots of practices, and a bunch of amazing people! Pauliina Hallama, who was our trainer and master coach, is one of the most dynamic speakers I’ve ever met. She has an outstanding presence and natural ease in building rapport – we were really lucky to have her as our mentor.
During the course I met around 30 people, one more interesting than the other. Participants were from a variety of different professional fields from a pharmacist to a fitness coach, accountants and novelists. That diversity was the real engine for growth and a drive to really insightful discussions during the weekend. So be ready to get really active, to coach from day one and be ready to network A LOT! I am not going to hide the fact that the course is tiring physically, but at the same time so interesting and worth it, that like me, you’ll be sure to discover a new kind of positive tiredness. I had already met lots of like-minded people during the introductory workshop, but this was the occasion to meet even more new people and build stronger links as we spent 30 hours working together for three days. (We are still in contact and are already planning to organise a meet up shortly to follow-up on each others’ journey.)
What it gave me and how I used what I learnt
Since the course I didn’t focus too much on the coaching certification process itself but rather on applying all the tools that I learned in my everyday life, eg. how to practice efficiently active-listening and how to split your guru objective (aka your ultimate goal) into smaller baby-steps. Mostly I have been focusing on developing my growth marketing consultancy further.
I am planning to continue my journey as an entrepreneur and one of my dreams would be to be able to become a digital nomad – being able to travel around the world while discovering new people and cultures and helping SMEs and individuals to achieve their business goals through marketing, communication and growth hacking.
And just to finish off, I don’t usually give extensive reviews on the events that I attend. In fact, this is MY FIRST long-form content as a Marketer! Thanks for making it to the end!
I would simply say: If you can attend, you should!
Thank you Rémy! You can find more information about Rémy and his journey on his website. In fact, at the moment Rémy is working with us redesigning our website, so stay tuned!