Coach inspires himself to go it alone

May 20 2009 by Iain Laing, The Journal

A BUSINESS coach who has gained years of experience in guiding top entrepreneurs to build their businesses has decided to take a leap of faith and go it alone.

Chris Baxter, 44, of Houghton le Spring, has set up business coaching company, Good Enough Never Is (GENI) after being a franchisee for coaching network Ology for four years.

Teaming up with his wife Heather Baxter, who has 16 years’ experience in recruitment, he intends to mix business coaching with a specialised people finder service. He said: “GENI is dedicated to helping businesses learn how to be brilliant. We help people to produce excellent performance at work, because every organisation will only ever be as good as the people who work there.

“I decided to set up my own coaching business as I was Ology’s top performing franchisee for several years and I felt like I had taken it as far as it could go.

“GENI allows me to have greater control over the content of the coaching sessions and I can add my own ideas and psychologies to the training. I have since developed my own psychology-based model for understanding and transforming individual performance, which I can now implement in my own coaching sessions.”

Chris, a professionally trained coach and facilitator, is also writing a book called The Effectiveness Map, which he hopes to publish next year.

Heather Baxter said: “We work with businesses to help them identify where they want to be and how to get there practically and promptly. Now not only can Chris offer coaching to businesses, but we can also help them fill that gap when it comes to finding the right person for a particular role, which sometimes businesses aren’t fully skilled at doing.”

Chris’s past clients include CJ Garland & Co, CTC Marine Projects, Imass, ITPS, Bastion Security Installations, Kromek, Arriva, and The Specials Laboratory.

Before he entered coaching, Chris worked for manufacturing companies in the North East, in roles including planning, purchasing, systems management and supply chain director.