About Frances
The Story
As a kid, adults always told me I was a natural leader. I had no idea what that meant, so I looked around at people in leadership positions. Being a leader, I decided, meant telling people what to do. Off I went, working my way up to leadership positions in extracurriculars and later in my career, and I realized I didn’t really like to tell people what to do. Funny thing was, they didn’t want to be told what to do, either. I got tired of feeling frustrated and angry all the time. I learned that, as a trainer and as a manager, what I really loved doing was helping people learn and grow so that they could do whatever it was successfully. So I became a coach in 2021 and jumped ship from a 26-year career with the same company in 2023 to start my own business. I love what I do, and I 100% believe that you already have all the answers inside your own head. I’m here to help you clear the noise and the clutter so that you can find those answers for yourself.
The Work Experience
After spending my teens working in restaurant kitchens learning that I didn’t want to work in restaurant kitchens, I transitioned to record store work in the heyday of the early 90s, which was far more glamorous, if low-paying. I spent a couple of years working for a bank, where I learned what “soul-sucking” meant.
When I moved to Austin, I got what was meant to be a short-term job at Half Price Books. Twenty-six years later, I had worked my way up from Bookseller to Trainer to District Manager/AVP, leading the #2 most profitable district in the chain with 11 direct reports and 150+ employees. A huge part of my job was managing the employee lifecycle* and training/coaching leaders at all levels. Now I run my own coaching business, do contract work for my coaching school, and work as a Mental Health Coach for Lyra, an EAP provider.
* The phrase "employee lifecycle" is an icky phrase meaning hiring, onboarding, training, performance managament, promotion, discipline, and termination.
The Education
I am an ICF Associate Certified Coach (ACC) and an iPEC Certified Professional Coach / ELI Master Practitioner, which means I went through an accredited coaching program to learn how to help people set and meet their goals. It also means I am bound by the ICF Code of Ethics to ensure I don't do stupid things with my clients. I have a BA in English from Kenyon College, which means I read a variety of books and wrote passable papers about a lot of them. I still read all the time, and I have never stopped learning about anything I do.