Today we’d like to introduce you to Taura White.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Taura. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I started facilitating workshops a little over ten years ago while living in Indianapolis. I had a friend who’d started a women’s ministry and hosted empowerment workshops for women. My workshop was “What’s Your Passion”. How did I come up with “What’s Your Passion”? In the midst of my professional growth, my mentor asked me about my passion. He told me that “your passion is the thing that you’d do for free”. At that moment, I realized that I didn’t understand what passion was. I used that teachable moment to not only find myself, but also to empower others. “What’s Your Passion” became my signature workshop for years, and I hosted group sessions with youth, community groups, and women’s ministries.
One day, a friend asked me to coordinate a boot camp to help women find their passion and develop a personal vision. I fell in love with the content from the classes and decided to stick with the boot camp format. From there, I continued to work with community groups and women’s ministries. At that moment, I found that my passion was really helping women maximize their potential. When I moved back home to Atlanta, I packaged the personal development workshops with the nonprofit training and formed Coaching Communities in 2018. My goal was to help organizations and individuals maximize their full potential. I believe that many of us have what it takes to succeed. We need someone to coach us through the process of maximizing that potential.
Has it been a smooth road?
No, it hasn’t always been a smooth road. The business has been a living demonstration of my personal growth as a woman and as a professional. I started these workshops at some of the most gut-wrenching moments in my personal life. From my graduate school studies while working full time to going through a divorce, I began to use my own challenges as a foundation for helping others. Honestly, I think the hardest part of the journey was believing that I was smart enough to do it and that people would listen to me. It takes a lot to encourage others when you are privately struggling to encourage yourself. I became my case study when I taught classes. I had to use my most vulnerable moments to help others see that growth is a journey. Like many of the people I coach, I lacked the confidence that I had what it took to be successful. Coaching is a niche skill. I thought I needed others to help me maximize my potential. I thought having others tell me I was good enough would propel me forward. I learned that I needed to first validate myself. I think that’s why I gravitated toward helping women. Through this journey, I’ve changed business names a couple of times. I even had a business partner or two along the way. I found that I needed to stand on my own two feet and just do it. That’s what I did!
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Coaching Communities is a learning and development company designed to help individuals or organizations through customized training and workshops. At its most basic level, I help organizations, mostly newly formed nonprofits, with their organizational development. I have found a niche in helping nonprofit boards understand their fiduciary responsibility as a governing body. Where I am most proud is the coaching curriculum, 100 Days of YOU. 100 Days of YOU is a curriculum that I developed, tested and implemented. The curriculum is set up as 100-day journeys of personal and professional development. There are three journeys: Personal Development, Leadership Development, and Leader Development.
Each journey is private, so the participants rarely tell others that they are working with a life coach. By the end of 100 days, most participants complete a strengths assessment, devise strategies to overcome their weaknesses, explore their passion, set a personal vision, learn how to build more meaningful relationships and explore how to operate in their passion through professional or community work. Participants agree to work with a group of six to eight individuals and complete daily homework for 100 days. Class ends with a graduation where they talk about their journey with family, friends and accountability partners. Once completed, they can move on to the second journey in leadership development. In leadership development, we take a deeper look at how participants are using or can use their passion in their professional life. Participants will review their strengths and align them with their professional work. They will explore how they can grow in their passion by researching the job market to assess where there are opportunities. They strengthen that personal vision and develop a five-year game plan where they can continue to grow once the class is completed. Each participant will find a mentor and have “mentor moments”. The mentors serve as a professional resource when the participants need advice or support. Finally, we work on professional branding. They learn how to do elevator speeches, update their resumes and professional social networking sites, and facilitate group sessions. Once completed, the participant moves to the final journey and learns how to be a better leader. In this 100-day journey, I help the participants understand their role as leaders in their respective organizations. We explore their leadership style, how they communicate to and with others, assess organizational culture, and learn how to leverage their skills in the community. Our goal is to help them hone their professional brand from leadership development and use it in their role as a leader. In this final journey, the participants are challenged to find a colleague within their organization- preferably in a leadership role- to have candid leadership conversations that will support their growth and development. Since I rolled out this curriculum in 2017, some of the participants have gotten new jobs, have been promoted to leadership roles within their organizations, or began serving in their community.
This is not a traditional life coaching curriculum. I teach to the premise that you are the best fortune 500 company that you’ll ever know. So take those skills that you use everyday at work and build yourself like a business. You can set your own personal vision or mission, identify personal goals to track year over year, and develop your own professional or personal brand. Maybe you don’t want to be a CEO for a company, but you can use the same skills to be the CEO of your home.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Because I started my business when I lived in Indianapolis, I wasn’t sure if Atlanta was a good market. Now that I’m settled, I’ve found that Atlanta is an amazing market! Not just because Atlanta is my birth home, but because there are so many new and young professionals moving to this city for personal and professional growth. The city is large- much larger than where I started the business. The curricula can help those new to Atlanta develop a competitive edge, overcome some of the challenges associated with moving to a much larger city and help young professionals seeking growth and development.
Pricing:
- Each journey is $150. That includes your workbook, journal, and personal assessments.
- Board training starts at $500 for four hours of training and includes up to three coaching sessions with the board president or chair.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://coachingcommunitiesllc.com/
- Phone: 317-340-4930
- Email: coachingcommunitiesllc@gmail.com
- Instagram: @coachingcommunities
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