Sam Overton

Before I started with Michael my business was going well; I'd started to sell more impressive courses to more interesting people but what I was finding was that as I was getting more ambitious clients and therefore I really needed to sharpen up and get to the highest level I could, whether that be about my branding or the service I was providing.

I've always been ambitious and self-assured, but as I saw my business improving, I knew that there were still feelings of imposter syndrome especially as I was now getting clients who were very successful. I started feeling that maybe I'm not really at that level and that I needed guidance to get to a level where I could feel completely comfortable working with the types of clients that I was now attracting.

I remembered working with a client about five years ago who told me that he'd worked with Michael and it had been a life-changing decision for him. It was almost like the Universe gives you signs when you need them the most. Michael’s name had also recently been featured on a podcast that a friend was creating as the coach for the elite, getting people from a good level to achieving excellence.

The decision to reach out to him was easy and there was no competition. I didn't look at any other coach. I'm very intuitive sometimes in the way that I think and the fact that Michael's name kept popping up meant that I wanted to reach out to him and find out more so that I could be sure that he was the right person for me.

The time I walked in for the initial consultation, Michael was dressed immaculately in an amazing apartment in Mayfair. I already knew that this was the type of person that I wanted to work with, especially as I am very professional but sometimes lack that attention to detail.

One of the things that I was looking forward to was developing my own practice and my own ideals were immediately represented in Michael’s environment. During the consultation, there was a tiny speck of dust on the top of one of his windows that no one would ever notice in a thousand years and Michael had apologised that there was a speck of dust there. So I already knew that he was highly attentive to detail but also that he had a humility where he wasn't pretending or putting on a front as being someone that he's not.

The consultation played out very much like a coaching session, he asked me questions about my aspirations, my vision and my goals. He was also able to answer a lot of my questions and by the end of the three hours, I left the room feeling energised and that I'd already got a lot of help from him. I was inspired to take up the coaching as we were already developing a relationship.

I was very clear with Michael at the start that I'm someone who works well with accountability. I like to say, ‘these are my goals; this is what I want to achieve by this time next week or in two weeks’ and then I want him to hold me accountable. He took that on board, we made a list of action steps at the end of each session that I would need to take and update him on by the following session. What I found was that it was quick and easy to fix a lot of the branding problems that I was having and to make my image look much better online. I also found as I worked with Michael, that the focus shifted a little bit more onto working on my mentality. I consider myself to be positive, I'm very capable of dealing with high-pressure situations but Michael would call me out if I said something that was slightly defeatist. Anytime I said I can't do this or I'm finding this difficult, he would encourage me to reframe it. When I told him about some of my personal circumstances, some of my relationships or some of the business practices that I was doing, he would challenge whether I was living up to my full potential.

The sessions evolved into Michael helping improve my mindset, the way that I was thinking and considering my future and my vision. I found that every time I left his place, I was walking taller and straighter, feeling energised. I felt like I was communicating with someone with strong values and who seeks excellence in everything that he does.

I am now working with my clients, similarly to how Michael worked with me, in challenging people to evaluate their own standards. When I'm talking to a high-net-worth individual or a 'high-value' client, I walk into those sessions knowing that I can give them a level of coaching that they haven't experienced before. I know that I am the quintessential professional when I'm working with the types of people that I'm working with now.

The results for my business improved instantly. My website improved, my YouTube channel banner was changed, everything across all of my platforms and branding was integrated. What I hadn't anticipated, as a social skills and dating coach, was that Michael helped me to look at my own relationships. I've always had a very active social life and it's something that's important. When I asked him about his social life, he said, ‘my clients are my social life, I work with amazing people and they are also some of my best friends.’ He encouraged me to look at the relationships in my life, to be more attentive to the people that I was spending time with, and more selective with people in general. I knew that he would help me with the business side but I hadn't noticed some of the obstacles of my own mind when it came to my personal life that Michael helped to illuminate for me.

The return on investment was almost immediate for me. Michael encouraged me to raise the prices and raise the value of the courses I provide because he allowed me to see what my time was worth.

Michael takes a really great interest in you personally and in how your life actually is, he really wants to know who you are as a person and to bring out the best in you.

I knew that my future self would look back with pride on the decision to take this plunge. So for anyone thinking about it, all I can say is: you're at the side of the cliff, you're ready to go off the edge, the parachute is there and you're going to be okay. You just have to jump.