What Actually Happens in a Coaching Consultation?

Episode 28: If you have been thinking about booking a free coaching consultation but are not quite sure what to expect, this episode is for you. Career Change Coach Dana Stevens walks you through exactly what happens in a consultation call, from what you actually talk about to what you walk away with. 

In this episode you will learn:

• What a free consultation actually is, and what it is  not
• Exactly what you talk about in the hour, and why it is different from talking to the people already in your life
• What people typically walk away with, emotionally and practically
• Why you do not need to be sorted, ready or clear before you book
• Who these calls are genuinely designed for, particularly women in midlife who know something needs to change
• Why booking is not a commitment to anything except an hour of proper attention on something that matters

Book your free consultation with Dana during Consult Week: https://calendly.com/danastevens/initial-coaching-chat

Book a free Coaching Consultation:

https://calendly.com/danastevens/initial-coaching-chat

Connect with Dana:

Website: https://www.danastevens.com/workwithme
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dana_stevens_coach/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danastevens1/

If this episode resonated, follow The Career Change Studio and share it with someone who’s feeling stuck in their career.

And if you’re ready to design a working life that truly fits your needs and lifestyle, book a free consultation call at https://calendly.com/danastevens/initial-coaching-chat

Special thanks to @Lou_Greenaway_Music for the piano composition and performance.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:51

Hello! This week is an exciting one for me because this week is consult week or consultation week, which means that for one week I open up extra spaces in my calendar for free consultation calls specifically for people who've been thinking about making a change to their career but they haven't taken that first step of having a conversation yet. So that's this week if you're listening in real time, which is the last week in April 2026. And so today I want to do something I haven't done before on this podcast, but I want to tell you exactly what a consultation with me actually involves, what we talk about, what it feels like, what you walk away with, and who it's actually for. Because I know that one of the things that stops people booking is not knowing what to expect. The word consultation might put you off, it can sound a bit formal, but it can maybe feel like you're gonna be assessed or something, that you need to arrive with everything figured out to a consultation, or maybe you're worried that you'll end up feeling pressured into something you're not ready for. None of that is what it is, so I do want to explain today. So I'm gonna start with a question. What if there was one conversation that could shift everything for you? Not fix everything, right? Not solve everything overnight, but shift things for you. Create this like crack of light in what has felt like a really solid, heavy wall. Help you see your situation from an angle you might not have been able to get to on your own. This is what I see happening in these calls regularly, and it's why I keep making space for them because one conversation, the right conversation with the right person at the right moment, can do something that months of thinking on your own simply can't do. So let me tell you what that conversation actually looks like, and to explain it, it might be helpful for me to start with what a consultation isn't, right? Because hopefully that's going to be useful. It isn't a sales pitch from me, right? I'm not going to spend an hour trying to convince you to sign up for coaching. That's not how I work, and it's not what these calls are for. If at the end of our conversation you feel that coaching with me is the right next step, brilliant. If you don't, that's completely fine too. There is genuinely no pressure and no obligation on either side. Coaching is something that you come into like in a partnership, like you have to want to do it, right? So me forcing you, even if I knew how to do that, that would not work for you. And it wouldn't help you, and it definitely wouldn't work for me either, right? It wouldn't make coaching work, it wouldn't make my job fun, it wouldn't be a useful use of my time. So I genuinely have no interest in doing that. It's also not like a job interview or an assessment, you're not being assessed. There's no right or wrong way to show up to a consultation. You don't need to be like organized in your thoughts or articulate or have a really clear sense of what you want. In fact, as I'll come back to later, lots of people arrive pretty tangled up in terms of their own brains, and they can get a lot from these calls. It's also not therapy. We're not going to spend time like rooting around in your past, unpacking your childhood, or sitting in heavy emotional territory in a consultation. This is a forward-focused conversation. It's practical, warm, it will have a purpose, right? And like I said earlier, it's not something you need to prepare for. You don't need to have done any research or made any decisions or come with a plan already formed. You just need to show up. That is the only requirement. So I've told you what it isn't. Let's talk about what it is. It's actually like a real conversation, a supported conversation about where you are, what you want to change, and what might be possible for you. It's typically an hour and it's entirely focused on you, your situation, your career, your life, and it's free, right? No catch, no conditions, just a genuine opportunity to talk to someone who does this every day, who helps people change their lives and careers every day and can offer you something that the people in your life, however much they love you and want to help, often can't. So what do we actually talk about in that hour? Well, first we start with you and your situation. I'll ask you questions about where you are right now, what's not working, how long you've been feeling that way, what you've already tried, what's keeping you stuck. And this part of the conversation matters more than people expect. Because for a lot of the women I speak to, this might be the first time they've talked about their career situation with someone who actually knows what to do with what they're hearing, right? Who's not going to say, oh, I'm sure it'll work out, or have you thought about just looking for something similar but better, just getting another job, who's not going to change the subject when it gets complicated or struggle to know how to respond when the feelings get real. And sometimes people do get emotional, and that's fine, because this is an emotional topic, right? And a lot of people I speak to have been carrying this for a long time. They might have talked to their partners, their friends, their colleagues, and those people love them and want to help, but there's only so much an untrained ear can do with I just don't know what I want, and I feel completely lost and I don't even know where to start. After a while, the people around you run out of things to say, and you can see them running out of things to say, which makes you feel like a burden even more on top of everything else. And one thing I often hear is, oh, my partner or my husband is so bored of hearing me moaning about how much I hate my job. And maybe that's where you are. Maybe your partner's tired of hearing it, or they just don't know what to say or how to help, or maybe they're one of the people that tries to maybe fix the situation by sending you jobs or just telling you what they would do, right? If that's it, that's all okay, and that's very common, and that's what I'm here for, right? So we start there with your situation, and then we move into what you actually want. Not what you think you should want, or what sounds like a sensible next step, or what would be easiest given where you are, but what you genuinely want. What you want your working life to feel like, what you want the next chapter of your career to look like, even if that picture is only really vague right now, and it probably will be. So don't worry if you're thinking, but I don't know what I want. That's exactly the point, right? Don't panic. That's totally fine too. Sometimes people come with absolutely no idea. Sometimes you might just have a vague inkling of what you want, and either way, it's helpful for me to understand the level of what you do already know. Remember, it's not a test. You don't get prizes for being clearer about what you want. It just really helps me because it makes me think about where you are and what you need the most help with, so I can prescribe the most appropriate type of coaching for you. We also talk about what's holding you back, what you see as your obstacles, both practical and internal. Because in my experience, they're rarely just one or the other. There's usually a mix of genuine practical considerations and thinking patterns that might be keeping you stuck, more than just the circumstances alone would be. And being able to name or identify those things can be really helpful. Again, don't worry if you're not sure yet, that doesn't matter at this stage. Then what I do is I bring my perspective. Based on everything that you've shared and my experience of working with women through exactly this kind of transition, I'll help you see a path forward, a clearer picture of what a structured process would be that would help with your specific situation, where you need to start, how you need to get started, and why, what order would be most useful to do things in and why, how you'll get to a career change decision so that you can start taking action and what you specifically, you personally, will likely need to focus on as part of your individual journey. As part of that, I'm going to explain what type of mindset work in particular is going to help you based on what you've told me, okay? And you also get to ask me absolutely anything about your specific situation, about career change in general, about how my process works and whether it might be right for you, about coaching and what it involves and whether it's what you need right now. There are no stupid questions and no cheritry is off limits. I want you to ask me the awkward thing, the embarrassing thing, things you don't want to ask anyone else, right? Or you don't know who to ask. And you can tell me about your doubts and your fears about coaching too. You don't need to worry about how I'm gonna feel or hurting my feelings, like I'm totally trained to hold space for you to say things like that and be okay, right? I'm gonna be okay. So it's all about you sharing what you're worried about, maybe concerns about undertaking coaching or a process like this if it's your first time or if you've never done something like this before. And the more honest you can be with me and yourself about what your concerns are, the more we can talk them through, the more I can help you, right? So we can work out what feels like an actual barrier and what is something that we can work through. And all of this will give you clarity on what you can focus on next, a sense of what the path forward could look like, a different relationship to the situation you walked in with. Typically, something shifts even in that one hour, right? You just need to sharpen, bring your situation, however messy, and I'll bring expertise, perspective, and a proven process. And between the two of us, something that felt immovable usually starts to move. And I want to say a bit more about what it actually feels like to walk away from one of these calls, because I think it's worth maybe explaining a bit more than just saying, Oh, you're gonna feel much clearer, because the thing I hear most often after a consultation is some version of, oh, that's a massive relief, or I feel like I can breathe again. Not because everything is solved, not because they always know exactly what they're gonna do next, but because the thing that's been sitting heavy and unexamined in the background of their life has been brought forward, is being examined, is being looked at, and it's usually found that we can navigate it and it usually feels more manageable. There's something that happens when you say out loud the thing you've only been thinking in your own head. It changes shape, it becomes something you can look at rather than something that is just weighing on you. And when you say it to someone who responds with recognition rather than alarm, who says, Yes, I see exactly what's going on here, and here's what I think that means for you, and here's what we can do about it. The relief is significant. Honestly, one thing people say to me all the time is like, oh my gosh, do you think I'm a lost cause? Do you think I'm too messy or I'm past hope? And I always say no because I genuinely don't think they are. Like the way they are feeling inside that moment is they're feeling like it's insurmountable and there's no way out. Whereas typically I'm looking at and thinking, oh, I know what to do here, I know what you've got to do. This is manageable. We can make changes here. I can pretty much guarantee I've seen and heard what you're going through before, even if it feels very, very unique to you, right? Nothing is typically insurmountable. And people also walk away with momentum, which sounds like a small thing, but it's really a massive thing. Because momentum is often the thing that's been missing, the sense that something's moving, that a step's been taken, that the long period of going around in circles has been broken. That feeling, once it arrives, tends to create more, right? More momentum. And often people walk away with like a reframe. That's what I love to give people is like a reframe, a way of seeing their situation that they couldn't find alone. Something I reflected back to them that landed differently than it felt from the inside, a possibility they hadn't considered, or even a certainty about how progress was possible for them, a fear that they had been treating as a fact, that turned out to be something we could work with rather than something that stopped everything. Just one hour. That's all it is. And yet I've seen it genuinely be the thing that's changed the direction of someone's working life. Not because I said anything magical, right? But because the right conversation at the right moment with someone who knows what they're looking at can do something that time and thinking on your own can't do. People walk away feeling lighter, clearer, and like something has finally started to move. Like I said, not because everything's resolved, but because they're no longer carrying it on their own. So we thought another thing that might be helpful is to be quite specific about who this is for, because sometimes people read free consultation and assume it's just for people who are almost ready, people who have done most of the thinking and just need a nudge in the right direction. And I want to be clear that it's not what I mean at all. The consultation is for you if you've been feeling stuck in your career for a while and you can't quite get traction on what to do about it. You don't know where to start. It's for you if you know something needs to change, but you can't articulate what, and every time you try to think about it, clearly you end up going round and round in circles. It's for you if you're exhausted by the questions, by how long they've been sitting there, by the gap between where you are and where you want to be, and the feeling that the gap is not getting any smaller. It's particularly for you if you're in midlife and you've reached a point where you know that the current situation is no longer sustainable, that what you need and want from your working life has changed and isn't going back, where the version of success you've been working towards doesn't fit the person you've become or the life you actually want to be living. Where you have more self-knowledge now than you did 20 years ago and you want to use it but you don't know how to get started with that. And it's for you if you're not sure if coaching is the right thing for you, or if you've never worked with a coach before and you're not quite sure what it involves, the consultation is the right place to find out. And it's for you if you don't have your thoughts in order. I can work with whatever version you bring. As a coach, helping clients navigate their messy mind is what I do all the time. So please don't hold off just because you feel that your mind's too messy or you're not sorted, you're tangled up and you're not sure what to say. As I talked about in a recent episode of this podcast, you don't need to have your head sorted before you get started. That's literally what coaching helps with, okay? Getting clear on your situation is part of what the conversation is designed to do. You do not need to arrive ready, just arrive as you are, and that is entirely enough. This is not for people who are just looking for a quick fix.

unknown 16:35

Right?

SPEAKER_00 16:35

If you're just looking to just go and get another job, there's other people that help with that, other places you can get help with that. This is about helping you to redesign your life. It's about helping you identify and create your life first career. So you don't need to be ready, sorted, or fully clear already. You just need to be at a point where you know something needs to change and you're willing to have an honest conversation about it. That's all. And I just want to come back to the no obligation point just one more time because I think it really does stop a lot of people from booking, even when everything else sounds right. Booking a consultation doesn't mean that you're committing to coaching. It doesn't mean you're saying yes to anything beyond an air of your time. There's no pressure, you know, there's no expectation that you'll even make a decision on the call if you don't want to, if you're someone that needs time to reflect, there's no script I'm working through to move you towards like this particular outcome, right? What there is is a genuine conversation. And at the end of it, if you feel that continuing to work with me is the right thing, we can talk about what that looks like. If you decide it would be good for you, but now isn't the right time, that's fine too. And if you want, I can help you identify what that future time might be, or you can just get back to me in your own time. And if you decide coaching isn't right for you, that's also completely fine. You will still walk away with something valuable. The hour will not have been wasted either way. And because I work with a pretty small number of clients at any one time, which means I can only offer a limited number of these calls, I've opened up the calls this week to the people on my mailing list first. So by the time you listen to this, lots of slots might have gone, but that's not a reason to feel pressured, right? It's just a practical reality. The reason to book is not because the slots are limited, the reason to book is because you've been sitting with this for long enough. And an hour of proper expert focused attention on your situation is worth more than another few weeks of going round in circles alone. Booking is not a commitment to anything except an hour of proper attention on something that matters, and that is a very reasonable thing to say yes to. So if any of what I've described today sounds like something you need, I want to personally invite you to book in. Like I said, it's free, it's no obligation, you don't need to prepare, you don't need to have everything figured out, you just need to show up and be willing to have an honest conversation about where you are and what you're thinking you might want to change. And here is what I want to say to you if you're on the fence, right? If you've been thinking about booking for a while, maybe even listening to this podcast for a while, but I haven't quite taken this step, think about the version of you who books the call, who's decided in a small but kind of important way that she's worth an hour of proper attention, that her career and her happiness matters enough to take that seriously, that the thing she's been carrying around deserves to be looked at properly rather than kept in the background. That decision, once made, tends to be the beginning of something, not because the call is magic, but because the act of taking it seriously is the first step of taking yourself seriously and your desires and your wants seriously. And that step, once taken, often leads to another one, and then maybe another one, right? So the link to book is in the show notes. Consult week runs until the end of this week, until Friday, the 1st of May, 2026. And if you can't find any more slots this week, if if things are already booked up by the time this goes out or by the time you're listening to this, you can use the link to my automated calendar to find a slot that works for you after consult week. I'm actually going to add some extra spaces after consult week because I know lots of you have said that you want some dates later in May as well. So do come and have a conversation. I would genuinely love to talk to you. And if this moment is not the right moment, that's also okay. I will keep making spaces available for consults and consultations. This podcast will keep going, and when the moment is right for you, I'll be here. Okay. Thank you so much for listening. I'm gonna see you next week. Bye for now.