Cat Burnett

I honestly can’t believe it’s been 306 days since I started this challenge.

Almost a year ago, I sat at home in a storm of desires. I wanted to raise money for Mind and do my bit of mental health advocacy in a way that makes a tangible difference, I wanted to challenge my coaching skills in a new way, and I wanted to coach a hell of a lot more in a way that kept me accountable and pushing forwards. From all of these threads, a challenge was born. A challenge to coach 365 hours in 365 days, to raise money for Mind.

Looking back, I was a little naive. I mean, that’s really a lot of hours. I had a full time job at the time, my business was tiny, and my pipeline nonexistant. And yet, I didn’t doubt I could do it.

10 months later, I’m not entirely sure I’m going to reach the 365 mark (definitely not without your help, dear reader), but I’m still pushing on a trying my best! With 59 days left to go, I’ve managed to raise £4385 for Mind. That’s incredible to me! I thought I’d raise maybe £2500 throughout the year, and I’m on track to double my expectations. That’s the real important factor here, because that money will be used to make an enormous impact for those struggling with, or supporting those with, mental health issues in the UK. You can see how Mind use their donations here if you’re curious.

The last 10 months have been a rollorcoaster. Firstly, it was trying to fit my hours in around a full time job and busy life of ‘extra-curricular’ commitments. I got off to a good start, entirely on track throughout November, but quickly fell behind as December brought with it the breakdown of my relationship, being let go from my full-time work, and Christmas (aka when no one wants coaching because they’re busy eating turkey and chocolate). I stumbled into January behind target and suddenly needing to make my previous side-hustle of a coaching business into my full-time thing.

It’s fair to say that it took me a while to warm up. The first few months of the calendar year included a lot of processing, and a lot of sitting around thinking ‘what the fuck can I write about on social media?’, which led me to LinkedIn. Finally. And thankfully.

Lack of hours also bred innovation. Yes, the challenge created the great tarot card/coaching experiment. I keep getting asked about this so here’s how it happened. I was really struggling to gain traction on my coaching hours, and I was bored. I posted a question box to my Instagram story, suggesting people asked a question and I’d pull a tarot card to provide the answer. Not only was this massive fun, and a great boredom-buster, it also triggered followers and friends to ask me if I offered tarot readings. I didn’t, and don’t, but it made me think… How can I fuse this interest with tarot to help my coaching challenge? An experiment! I decided to try mixing coaching and tarot cards because, well, why the hell not?

I don’t tell the future with them, I use the cards to help you access your intution. Just like in an ordinary coaching session, you decide what we’re talking about and you do all the thinking and connecting, but with these sessions we use the imagery from various tarot decks and cards to help us.

I couldn’t have predicted how popular or effective these sessions would be, and they’re now a staple in my business offering. But don’t worry, I haven’t joined a cult (yes, someone did think this), I don’t worship the devil (this also), and I still offer normal, tarot-free coaching too! If you’re interested in knowing more, you can read what my client’s have said here. The tarot session reviews are at the bottom of the page.

Thanks to being brave and posting about my tarot sessions on LinkedIn, and thanks to the generous sharing of what I’m doing by clients and supporters, I’ve managed to make some serious headway into my hours. As I’m writing today, I’ve coached 230 hours which mean I have 135 left to coach. So let’s do some maths:

With 59 days and 135 hours to go, that means I need to coach around 3 hours a day.

Practically speaking, it’s still doable. The difficulty, as always, is finding the people to coach.

So! If you would like to help me in this final strech, here’s what you can do:

  • You can book a one-off session for yourself (with or without tarot cards), in exchange for a donation to Mind, here.
  • You can book a block of coaching for yourself, and I’ll donate 20% to Mind, here.
  • You can recommend a friend, family member, or colleague to try some coaching with me by sending them this link: https://catburnett.coach/coaching-for-mind-challenge.
  • You can share what I’m doing on social media. If you’d like to tag me, I’m @catburnett.coach on Instagram, and Cat Burnett ACC on LinkedIn.

Whichever options you choose, thank you!! I’ll struggle to finish this challenge without your help, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.

Thank you for all of your support so far, and as ever, drop me any questions you have! ♥️⚡️