McGregor launches new venture: life and leadership coaching
BUSINESS
BY CHRIS EDMONDS CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Gordon McGregor may not set your goals, but he can give you the tools necessary to achieve them. McGregor, long a key member of the Nantucket AIDS Network, launched his latest venture - Jump Start Your Life - earlier this year. Jump Start provides clients with leadership consulting and life coaching.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent McGregor: "It was one of those light bulb moments. I knew where my talents could be effectively used."

"There wasn't a better way to define what coaching is to me than for a person to say they're finally ready to jumpstart their life, to move themselves from where they are today and to need some help doing it," McGregor said.

McGregor, who is also president of the Nantucket Interfaith Council, offers life coaching workshops and one-on-one counseling, either in person or, if required, by telephone. He also provides leadership consulting for businesses and public speaking coaching.

"There's a quote from Henry David Thoreau: 'If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.'" McGregor said. "I offer the tools to create that foundation."

Life coaching - "big" on the West Coast and "just entering the dialogue" on the East Coast, according to McGregor - has its origins in management consulting and executive training, as well as mentoring, behavior modeling, sociology, psychology and a number of various other fields.

Life coaches are not therapists, McGregor said. They are, instead, facilitators for people looking for ways to attain their goals.

"I always say: therapy is a process for the past and moving forward; life coaching is figuring out where you want to go and how you're going to get there," he said.

McGregor's clients range in age from people in their 20s to people in their 70s on island and elsewhere across the country. Workshop topics include preparation for college interviews to managing debt and building positive relationships. Regardless of age or need, certain "general themes" exist throughout, McGregor said.

"Often there are general themes that come up with every client, but you have to recognize the differences and the different styles for how people work," McGregor said. "Coaching is very regimented. It's about being effective efficiently.

"I have clients who walk in with all their goals already laid out. Other people might not have any goals at all, but we work to identify those goals. Some people have never given themselves permission [to set goals]. Some people have never worked through a goal-setting model."

McGregor draws from a wealth of personal and professional experience when coaching clients. The interfaith minister had spent much of his time since his 2001 ordination offering spiritual counseling, but it was not until he was taken on as a life coaching client himself that an epiphany occurred.

"It was one of those light bulb moments. I knew where my talents could be effectively used," McGregor said. "I didn't leave my life coaching experience knowing that I wanted to be a life coach. Over time, however, the universe drew people to me and I served naturally as a life coach. I was attracting more people into my life and serving officially and unofficially as a life coach in their lives."

The sustained and continuous attraction eventually meant that McGregor needed to make a decision of how best to pursue coaching. He said he decided in early 2006 that he would leave the Nantucket AIDS Network upon completion of his then-current projects in the summer of this year.

"I decided I was going to finish happily and complete the projects I was committed to, but I kept thinking 'What's next? What's next?' [Being a life coach] just blossomed into a logical and effective next step," McGregor said.

Not wanting to leave the island, McGregor wanted to find a pursuit beneficial to the Nantucket community.

"I needed to figure out what I needed to do that could take place on Nantucket," he said. "I recognized that I'd be able to offer support and make a difference in the Nantucket community. It's about empowering people and being the best you can be. It made me feel very alive and excited to do something on Nantucket that didn't exist before."

The island's first life coach is soon to become the island's first certified life coach. McGregor expects to complete his certification from the International Federation of Coaches in early 2008. The federation requires 400 hours of coaching and class work, as well as written and oral exams. McGregor's program is based outside of Boston, but there are programs throughout the country.

And as McGregor works toward his goal of certification, so, too, does he continue to work with a number of individuals and groups on Nantucket and the mainland to recognize and plan how to "discover a way forward," he said.

"Nantucket is an amazing community of dreamers," he said. "One of the things I love about life coaching is that I can help make those dreams become reality. I can give people the tools and the

guidance to start moving forward." I