Hi! We’re Stephanie and Martin - the work-life-leadership coaches
We help mid-career professionals shed the shoulds so you can define success on your own terms, go after it, and get it.
We’re a married couple with two kids who have teamed up as coaches, because we’ve been where you are and had to fight hard to have lives we love and careers that fill us up.
Where we started:
Like you, we graduated from good schools and got good jobs. We got promoted, got a seat at the top table, and still felt like we were falling behind. It became this predictable cycle that we accepted as the cost of our careers ….work hard, get anxious, work harder, achieve, work harder, doubt myself, repeat, repeat, repeat.
We’ve had our deepest moments of self doubt right after some of our biggest wins. And we never even celebrated those wins because there was always more to do, some other place we had to get to.
And we firmly believed that THIS WAS THE WAY to reach the next level of our careers. To positions of influence, leadership and impact.
We were wrong.
This is how it really went down.
February 2016, we’re living in central London (living the DREAM!) with the cutest and chubbiest newborn at our side. We’d both landed BIG promotions with fancy titles and we got daily compliments on our careers and had people telling us we had the ‘perfect’ family. Hah!
Behind the scenes, here’s what really happened:
Weekly Sunday night arguments over who had bigger work priorities and couldn’t pick our child up on time
The nights we’d stay up thinking about the feedback we received, wondering if the client or boss thought we were incompetent, or didn’t know what we were doing
Broken promises and missed family dinners because that’s the price you paid for advancement...right?
Or those moments when the hard got too hard and we felt unsure if this was even worth it
We realized that despite what it looked like from the outside - our careers, our lives, did not feel like our dream.
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With the help of our coaches and one another, we came to terms with the hard truth that we had traded our wellbeing, relationships, and personal goals for the quick ‘highs’ of external validation.
We depended on others affirming our work, applauding our contributions, and telling us we were invaluable members of the team like air - to feel good about ourselves and like we were on the right track. But when the positive feedback dried up during slow periods, it sent us into spirals of self-doubt.
That’s when we rebuilt our framework of success, flipped it on its head and got back in the driver’s seat.
And this is why we created the Personal Professional Playbook program.
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Today, we help high-achieving professionals do the deep soul-searching required to find out what you really want — from your career, relationships and your life. We work on building the kind of confidence that lets you walk into a room and advocate for the opportunities you deserve. And we help you construct personal and professional boundaries that keep you happy, healthy, and thriving.
Because from that place of clarity, confidence and balance, you can lead from a place of strength, and everyone will want to follow.
We believe that the work you do is important, and the only way to maximize your impact while also maintaining a balance in your life is to stop letting your career “happen to you”.
Sure, we’ve been through this ourselves, but why are we qualified to help you with leadership and life balance? Fair question. Here are the answers.
We’re certified coaches, parents to two little people, and have been married to each other for almost 9 years.
We’ve worked with high-achieving leaders in the for-profit, non-profit, consulting and corporate worlds.
We’ve been the ones on the hook for getting things done and we’ve led and coached people to get things done from individual contributors, to new managers, to the C-suite.
We’ve seen what it takes to develop deep confidence, become a powerful communicator in a way that brings instant trust, and make decisions that build a fulfilling career path with sustainable results.
Fun fact: We’ve lived, worked, and studied in the U.S., U.K., Nigeria, Australia, Mexico, Zimbabwe, Spain, Hong Kong, and Jamaica.
Hello!
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The Confidence Wizard (aka: Stephanie Chen Banjo)
Certified professional coach by iPEC and the University of Cambridge.
I hold the EQi-2.0 and ELI-MP certifications which allows me to administer two of the top Forbes-listed leadership assessments with my clients.
My superpower is sniffing out strengths, then helping clients develop and use those strengths to get in the room, and own the room.
For the past decade, I’ve helped high-performing leaders' shed the self-doubt and fears that hold them back from getting the results they’ve wanted, including clients like the female producer who had Netflix say YES to her show, and the male client who became the youngest and first black partner in his firm (and who was promoted again just 18 months later).
I’m also a speaker, workshop facilitator for corporate teams, and coach for BetterUp.
I’m married to the coolest guy ever (even though he owns more shoes than me and takes up all the closet space), and am mom to two littles.
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The Leadership Whisperer (aka: Martin Banjo)
M.A in Government from Johns Hopkins and MBA from the University of Cambridge
I have been a mentor and coach to emerging leaders for nearly a decade and am a certified life coach.
I have made a career of building high trust and high performing teams to tackle some of the biggest problems senior executives want to solve, like .
I’ve launched new products globally, defined how businesses should be restructured, and been a trusted advisor to leaders from the front lines to the C-suite.
I’ve learned that consistently great results come when you help capable people figure out all the things beneath the surface that are holding them back - that is my life’s passion.
I’ve learned how to help people structure the ‘existential’ questions they have into a lens and process that helps them define and achieve their goals.
I am an apprentice dad, and married to my best friend.
What are we like as coaches?
The coaching we do isn’t passive head-nodding nor is it a set of theories disconnected from your work reality. With love, we’ll challenge you, highlight blindspots, create ways to help you go further with your existing strengths, build critical new skills, and create accountability that will have you following through with even some of the hard actions you’ve been procrastinating.
And it’s all based on neuroscience-backed techniques that don’t just give you a quick ‘hit’ of confidence, but help you rewire the way you see yourself, others, and how you approach your goals.
If you ever find yourself wondering, “is it meant to be this hard?”, “does getting ahead have to cost my relationships this much?”, the answer is NO.
Yes, it will be filled with tough moments, but we’re talking about the kind of tough that’s worth it. The kind of tough that you’re willing do because you know how it’s supporting your longer term goals, supporting the things that matter to you most, like your love of challenge and growth, and the kind of tough that has direction, so when you’re wondering if it’s all worth it, you know the answer is YES.
WORK WITH US
What People Are Saying
“
Jessica taught me so much about a subject I thought I was already an expert on: myself!
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— KATY F.
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I was able to rekindle certain relationships with others from Jessica’s teachings.
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— ELIZABETH B.
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My confidence in the workplace has gotten so much better!
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— SARAH P.
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I let anxiety take over my life for too long. Now I have the strength to control my emotions.
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— VICTORIA G.
