She Planned Her Way Out β and Into Something Better | Executive to Coach | Nimble Roots Coaching
Lauren Gepford Β· Executive Leader turned Coach & Consultant
Where Lauren was when we started:
Lauren came to coaching from a high-pressure, high-conflict work environment she had built her entire life around surviving. Day to day that looked like not eating until 8pm, sleeping too little, and seeing herself as someone whose job was to solve every problem in front of her.
There wasn't much joy. There wasn't much sense of who she actually was beyond the crisis she was managing.
"I'd describe it as scattered β but the kind of scattered where you're too busy to notice how lost you are."
The crucial conversations she was avoiding were costing her more than she realized. With her team, she was avoiding being fully truthful about things she couldn't change β spending enormous energy on fiction. She was overthinking direct feedback and clear boundary-setting with colleagues, which drained her and made her less true to herself than she wanted to be.
"The anxiety wasn't coming from the work. It was coming from the gap between what I knew and what I was willing to say."
And underneath all of it β a dream she hadn't let herself believe in yet. She wouldn't even say the word "founder." That felt like something other people were allowed to be.
What shifted:
The work began with Lauren's job β navigating the complexity of executive leadership, building her skills as a supervisor, and finding a way to lead with authenticity in a difficult environment. But freeing up energy in one area of life created space for everything else to shift.
Midway through their work together, Lauren set a specific financial goal: build a safety net that would make it possible to leave, rest, and launch something new. She advocated for appropriate compensation in her current role. She planned deliberately so that when she left, she wouldn't be making decisions from fear.
"I knew going in that I'd likely earn about 25% less than my previous full-time salary β and I was okay with that, because I'd planned for it. That made an enormous difference. I wasn't making decisions from fear. I was making them from clarity."
What became possible:
Lauren left her position. She traveled for two months across seven countries. She completed a yoga teacher certification. And she launched her own consulting and coaching practice.
She is now a year into running her own business.
Her mornings start with a swim. Her days include coaching and consulting work she finds genuinely meaningful. She ends most days with hot yoga and dinner.
"That is not what my life looked like before β before it was months of sixteen-hour days at a desk followed by crashing out, then starting over."
The compounding effect:
Two years after their work together, Lauren noticed something. She caught herself spending fifteen minutes crafting a text message that should have taken thirty seconds.
"That kind of thing used to be invisible to me. Now I can see it, name it, and correct course. I trace that directly back to our work together β we identified early on that being a skilled communicator is one of my core life intentions, and once I saw that clearly, I started noticing everywhere I was working against it."
That's what compounding change looks like. Not a dramatic transformation. Just a skill, practiced consistently, until one day you realize you're a different person.
On becoming a coach:
"I would not have seen that I was called to be a coach if I hadn't first been coached by you. That came before any formal training β which meant that when I did go through the ACE program, I wasn't learning coaching in the abstract. I was seeing my own experience reflected back at me. That has made me a better coach. It's hard to help people through something you've never been willing to go through yourself."
What's next:
Lauren is a year into her own coaching and consulting practice β healthier and more fulfilled than she's ever been. The dream she once couldn't say out loud is now her daily life.
Testimonial β Lauren Gepford
When I started coaching with Slam I was scattered in a way where I was too busy to notice how lost I was. I was avoiding crucial conversations that were costing me enormously β and I hadn't let myself believe that I could be a founder. Through our work together I built a safety net, advocated for my own worth, and made a plan. I left my job, traveled seven countries, completed a yoga teacher certification, and launched my own coaching practice. Two years later I'm still noticing the compounding results β things I learned to see clearly are still revealing themselves. I would not have seen that I was called to be a coach if I hadn't first been coached by Slam."
β Lauren Gepford, Coach & Consultant
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