About
Karen is passionate about empowering others with the knowledge, tools and support they need to live an extraordinary life!
Karen has an anything is possible attitude…
Karen is a positive, success orientated and active with an anything is possible attitude. She spends a lot of her spare time in her garden and in the kitchen. She loves entertaining, food-styling, food photography and cooking. She has two awesome teenage children, Calypso and Cassidy, and a boarder collie, Mandela.
Karen loves books and reading. She says books have been her greatest teachers and brought her to where she is today. If you were to ask her where her natural motivation and her positive outlook come from she replies: ‘It comes from my two awesome children, the challenges I had to face in my life, my friends and mentors, and all the things I’ve been fortunate enough to experience”.
Karen strives to live each day with enthusiasm, passion and in her flow using her God given talents and gifts. She believes as long as she does that she has complete faith that God will take care of the rest.
Academic failure…
Karen was born and bred in Namibia, Africa. At school she was deemed an academic failure and was repeatedly told that she will get nowhere in life. Her comment to that today is: “If where I am now is nowhere, it is a pretty cool place”. She left Namibia when she was 18 to complete her last year of school in Cape Town (best move ever). From there she commenced her big OE and spent the next 5 years on the ocean working in the Yachting Industry. In 1991 she moved to NZ.
From Advertising Sales to Business Coach…
Here she landed by default in Sales and Marketing. Her first job in New Zealand was in Taupo, selling Advertising. Peter Blanks and Pauline Thorburn at Target Marketing were strong role models and strongly influenced Karen’s thinking and character. It was in these early days that Karen realized that business owners had no idea about advertising and marketing. They had no idea what worked and what didn’t and worst of all, they never stepped back to see what they could do differently. They did the same stupid mistakes over and over again and this impacted Karen’s commission income greatly.
She decided that if she could show business owners how to advertise effectively and could prove to them that advertising is an investment and not an expense, she would be able to increase her sales and achieve a consistent commission income. This led her on a learning journey to learn about advertising and Marketing and soon she had the results she was looking for. Sales increased dramatically and business owners profited from their advertising investment. With success on both sides, business owners consulted Karen for more business advice.
Karen recalls: While studying how to make advertising work, I learned many other things about operating a successful business. It was no rocket science, it was often the smallest things that made the biggest difference and I was in the fortunate position to be on the outside looking in”.
This took her career from Advertising sales to Business Consultant. After taking over a few run down businesses and selling them a few months later as profitable businesses, Karen had found a formula for business success, which lead into a Business Coaching Career.
Family first, nurturing the imagination of young children…
Karen’s Coaching Career was put on a back burner while her two children were young. Living on a dairy farm was a good environment for the family, which gave seed to Karen’s other passion, nurturing the imagination of young children. Finding toys that fostered a child’s imagination was not an easy task, which led her creative mind to a brand new mail order catalog business, Nature Play, selling children’s toys made from natural material, that foster a child’s imagination. In the first year, the catalog business won the Leading Edge Award. In the years to come Karen franchised Nature Play but her passion for Business Coaching kept tapping her on the shoulder. It was time to move on.
Business Coaching vs Personal Development…
Karen’s experience in the mail order industry added a new dimension to her business coaching career. While working with entrepreneurs and business owners in NZ, Australia and Asia she found that no matter how much she taught people about sales and marketing, business systems, customer service or creating a winning team, if the Personal Foundation of the person behind the helm was not strong enough, in growth or in crisis the business was always like a three legged table. Karen found that 60-70% of all business coaching time was spent on personal development, which led her into Personal Performance Coaching.
Support is the key – It is like hitting Bingo!….
While personal performance coaching in New Zealand, Australia and Asia the demand for weekend seminars was growing rapidly but looking back it was soon realized that 6 months or 1 -2 years later, people were not where Karen thought they should be, considering the tools and knowledge they received from the weekend seminars.
Karen came to the conclusion that life is far too fast and that success comes only when we have the knowledge, tools and support we need. Support and Accountability was the missing factor. From there she turned her coaching material and weekend seminars into 12 week and 12 month programs and finally people were getting the results Karen was looking for. It was like hitting bingo! Karen had found the formula for how to make the biggest long lasting difference. That is how the Personal Foundation Program, all the other Self Management Programs and Club of Mutual Improvements was born.