Coach

One-Hour Conversations · By Appointment Only

You already know what to change.
You’re here because you need
someone to say it back to you.

Margaret Ellison, ICF-Certified Coach & Former Strategy Director

Download the Self-Assessment Book a Discovery Call →

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The Anatomy of an Engagement

Three ways to begin.
One standard of rigour.

	Discovery Call Where it begins	Most Common Single Session For a specific crossroads	Ongoing Partnership For a season of change
Session Length	30 minutes	60 minutes	60 min / session
Preparation Required	None — arrive as you are	20-min intake form sent 48 hours prior	Weekly 10-min reflection prompt
What the Coach Sends Beforehand	A single question: "What decision are you currently avoiding?"	The full diagnostic framework — 12 questions across four domains	Session prep document + running decision log from previous sessions
What Happens in the Room	Mutual calibration. You describe the terrain; Margaret maps where she can be useful.	Structured excavation of one decision, pattern, or transition. No agenda imposed.	Alternates between deep dives and integration sessions. The arc is yours to shape.
What You Leave With	A clear sense of whether this is the right fit — and one reframe you didn't arrive with.	A written summary of the session's key insight and one concrete next action.	A living document: your decision log, reframes, and patterns observed over time.
Investment	Complimentary	$450 per session	From $1,800 / month (4 sessions)
Availability	Open — book directly	Limited to 6 new clients / month	Waitlist — 2–4 weeks

Not sure which is right? The Discovery Call will tell you.

Book a Discovery Call — It’s Free

Who This Is For

Three kinds of stuck.
One common thread.

The Mid-Career Professional

Between the promotion you don't want and the leap you can't justify.

You've built the résumé. The title, the salary, the reputation — all exactly where they should be. But "should be" stopped feeling like enough sometime in the last eighteen months, and you can't say that out loud to anyone who depends on you.

"I kept telling myself I needed more information before I could decide. What I actually needed was someone to point out that I'd already decided — I just hadn't given myself permission."

— Senior Director, Financial Services · 44

The Founder

You've outgrown the version of yourself that started this.

The company works. The team trusts you. The original vision is now a constraint. You built something real and now you're not sure you're still the right person to run it — or whether that thought makes you a coward or a realist.

"I thought I needed a coach who understood startups. What I needed was someone who understood that I was using the company as a reason not to ask harder questions about myself."

— Co-Founder, Series B SaaS · 38

The Rebuilder

Forty-something and building an identity that isn't defined by someone else.

The marriage ended, or the career did, or the version of yourself you performed for fifteen years finally became unperformable. The question isn't what to do next. It's who you are when the answer isn't tethered to someone else's expectations.

"She didn't ask me what I wanted to do. She asked me what I'd stopped letting myself want. That distinction took me three months to understand and about four seconds to recognize as exactly right."

— Physician · 47 · Two years post-divorce

If you read one of those and thought “that’s me” — it probably is.

From the Room

Anonymised. Shared with permission.

"The moment I realised I was describing a problem I'd already solved — I just hadn't let myself believe it was solved — was the most expensive thirty seconds of my career. Worth every penny."

— Operations VP · 41

"She doesn't give advice. She gives you back the thing you said ten minutes ago in a way that makes it impossible to ignore. It's infuriating and completely necessary."

— Founder · 35

"I came to talk about my career. We spent most of the session on a decision I made at thirty-two that I'd been managing the consequences of ever since. That was the actual work."

— Architect · 49

The Actual Intake Questionnaire

What you’ll be asked before a Single Session.

Most coaches keep their methodology opaque. This is the complete intake form — every question, reproduced verbatim. If reading it surfaces something, that’s information.

Describe the decision or transition that brought you here in one sentence.

Not the backstory. The sentence.

What have you already tried, and why did it fall short?

Include the advice you ignored as well as the advice you followed.

Who in your life knows the full picture of this situation?

If the answer is "no one," note that.

What would you decide today if you were certain no one would judge you for it?

This is not a trick question. It is the diagnostic.

What are you most afraid this process will confirm?

You don't have to share this answer. But write it down.

In twelve months, what does a successful outcome look like — not in career terms, but in how you feel when you wake up?

Be specific. Vague aspirations are a form of avoidance.

A Typical Six-Month Engagement

Week by week. No mystery.

Month 1+

Orientation

Sessions 1–2 establish the terrain. We identify the presenting issue and the underlying pattern — they are rarely the same thing. You receive your decision log and we begin tracking.

Month 2–3+

Excavation

The work deepens. Sessions focus on the specific decision or transition, but the frame widens. Patterns from the past are named without being pathologised. You leave each session with one reframe and one action.

Month 4–5+

Integration

You begin to act on what you've understood. Sessions alternate between new territory and consolidating what's shifted. The decision log becomes a record of who you're becoming.

Month 6+

Consolidation

We review the arc. What changed, what didn't, what remains. You leave with the diagnostic framework, your complete decision log, and the ability to run this process yourself.

Every engagement is different. This is a representative arc, not a guarantee.

The Diagnostic Framework

Download the Self-Assessment.

The same twelve-question diagnostic framework used in the first session of every Ongoing Partnership. It doesn’t give you answers. It gives you the questions you’ve been avoiding.

About Margaret Ellison

Fifteen years in strategy. A decade of coaching. Still more interested in your question than your answer.

Former Strategy Director at a $2B professional services firm. ICF Professional Certified Coach. Graduate of the Co-Active Training Institute. Based in New York; works globally via video.

ICF-PCC Certified

Co-Active Training Institute

200+ clients across 14 industries

Fluent in corporate, founder, and human

You already know what to change.You’re here because you needsomeone to say it back to you.

Three ways to begin.One standard of rigour.

Three kinds of stuck.One common thread.