Episode 006 - Adele Johnston

Get ready for an enlightening conversation with Adele Johnston, a multi-talented coach with a wealth of experience in Menopause Support, Nutrition, Positive Psychology, and Advanced Trauma-Informed Breathwork. With a BA in Business Studies and over 20 years of senior managerial experience in corporate Operational Resilience and Business Continuity, Adele brings a unique perspective to the table.

On this episode of Model the Master podcast, Christin focuses on topics related to women's healing, particularly for those experiencing menopause, early menopause, or perimenopause. Join us as we delve into Adele's background, her approach to coaching, and the techniques she uses to help her clients improve their physical, emotional, and mental well-being. Get ready to be inspired to take charge of your health and wellness journey!

Link mentioned at the end of the interview: https://adelejohnstoncoaching.com/free-copy-of-our-symptom-assessment/

Transcript

Christin G. Gutierrez (00:00):

Welcome to Model the Master Podcast, brought to you by Increpreneur, where we believe the fastest path to personal and professional growth is to model those who have gone before us. I'm your host, Christin Gutierrez, and today we're speaking with Adele Johnston. Adele is a leading menopause support coach, educator, and an evidence-based nutritionist, helping ambitious business women start, grow, and scale their businesses with stability and resilience in self, health and wealth. Using her proven three steps to Success Reclamation Formula, she empowers her clients to show up vibrantly and powerfully in life and business. Welcome to the show, Adele.

Adele Johnston (00:38):

Thank you for having me.

Christin G. Gutierrez (00:41):

Yeah, we're super excited to have you on the show today. So this is pretty impressive… You've done over 6 figures within ten months of launching your coaching business, and you're on track to do multiple 6 figures in 2023.

Adele Johnston (00:57):

Yes.

Christin G. Gutierrez (00:58):

That's amazing. But you weren't always a successful coach. Can you tell me a little bit about what led you to start your coaching business?

Adele Johnston (01:06):

Yes. An amazing question, so thank you. And, it's quite crazy when you hear things like that back (the introduction).

Like, wait, that was me? But yes, I had spent more than twenty years working for a corporation. I was in senior management inside Blue Chip Global Organizations working with EXCO and C-Suite Members, and then I went into investment banking for a while. I had always been very supportive and aware of the space of women's health, and growing up with a mom who was a bodybuilder and a personal trainer, I was very much always in the space. I was in a gym when I was ten years old, lifting bodybuilder-style weights and just really enjoying how our bodies work. So I had this kind of innate understanding of the body and everything. So, yes, I had experience working in the field of women's health, space for a number of years prior to exiting corporate life and the whole point in me leaving corporate was down to the fact that I actually went through early petty menopause.

(02:15):

So in my early thirties, I noticed changes, and thankfully we give gratitude for this, but all the checks, the blood tests, the scans, the biopsies all came back very healthy and clear and didn't explain why I felt the way I felt. So I was already being quite heavily involved in menopause care at that time and recognized that actually I was one of those ladies. I was one of these ladies who was  struggling around the hormonal drops. So I officially confirmed at 36 that I was perimenopausal. 

 So it was a bit of a whirlwind journey.

Christin G. Gutierrez (02:58):

Yeah, I can imagine.

Christin G. Gutierrez (03:02):

So you wound up leaving your corporate career and then what? You went full-time into menopause coaching?

Adele Johnston (03:09):

Yeah, pretty much. So I'd been supporting women for a while with body image, through mindset practices. I'm a certified Evidence-Based Nutritionist. I'm also a qualified and certified Positive Psychology Coach, and Advanced Trauma Breathwork Facilitator as well. So I've been doing a lot of work within the space of women's health and mindset care, and being in a senior management role, I would do a lot of this mentoring and coaching inside the corporate cogs as well. So it just became quite apparent to me when my own health, which is a huge value of mine, took priority. Unfortunately my employer at that time couldn't do anything to support my early perimenopause and how I was feeling. So I had to make a decision of “do I stick around here and suffer, or do I take action and step outside the corporate space and look after myself?” and I chose me. So yeah, I stepped outside of it and very beautifully, I feel, the universe paved the way and I started to work a lot more in depth in the menopause space and very, very quickly and stably built my business as it is today.

Christin G. Gutierrez (04:29):

That's amazing. It is so encouraging to know that even though your employer couldn't support you, that you wound up leaving corporate and going out there becoming the support that you didn't receive.

Adele Johnston (04:44):

Yes, exactly. That's it. 

Christin G. Gutierrez (04:49):

So what would you say is your greatest success in starting such a fast growing business?

Adele Johnston (04:56):

I think the greatest success is just how resilient we truly are when we have a passion and a purpose for doing something. I've realized that. This would've all been ironic because the line of work that I was in inside corporate, was operational resilience. Funnily, I would say that very quickly I started to understand that there wasn't just a gray area of support and knowledge - there was a black hole of support and knowledge. So I really rapidly developed relationships to onboard a lot of medical doctors as mentors, which was fantastic. They still are in my life, which is awesome. I learned a lot from them, from interviewing them, from reading medical journals and research, and over the course of about 18 months, I collated this library of menopause knowledge and information, and it was all of the stuff that I would say that I wanted and needed, that I wanted to know about. And something I realized is that I've got quite a good gift for taking that knowledge, that information, and actually putting it into really understandable and relatable content. So I then developed the Menopause Support Coach certification, which is fully accredited and certified, and doubly menopause doctor endorsed, and we now roll that out around the world to coaches of any industry: life coach, health coach, business coach. So anyone supporting or working with women, we can roll this out now and certify others to support to help.

Christin G. Gutierrez (06:50):

That's amazing. So you've accumulated this whole group of coaches around the world that are following your protocols?

Adele Johnston (07:02):

Exactly. So the reclamation formula was something that I had developed unknowingly, but developed this really beautiful three step symphony of support and we've helped thousands of women all around the world with this formula. It just became a pattern and we decided we needed to make it as simple as possible, like, we need to take away all the silliness and the nuances and make this as simple as possible for everyone. So the support that we offer in-house now is coaching and these coaches become the frontline support for women everywhere.

Christin G. Gutierrez (07:42):

That's great. So what is the Reclamation Formula? What are those three steps that you were talking about?

Adele Johnston (07:49):

Yeah, The Reclamation Formula. So three steps, really simple. We look at nutrition. So again, as an evidence-based nutritionist, this is a core lens if we think of them like lenses. So nutrition being number one: we look at lifestyle, which is everything really. And we have a beautiful process and practice that we take our ladies through to establish where they are in their lifestyle lens. But it's basically how we are using our life currency for others' energies. So a lot of this is around time. How are we showing up in corporate life, in our businesses, in our own life, and family, and for yourself? And the third one is mind. And again, a lot of this comes into the practices that we look at through positive psychology and through mindfulness.

Christin G. Gutierrez (08:41):

So what are some of the symptoms that a woman could look out for? Just maybe she's going through some things that aren't, they're not usual for her. She's starting to notice some changes she doesn't know. Maybe this is something that she's facing early?

Adele Johnston (09:01):

Absolutely. Well, just to give this a bit of context. A lot of doctors and medical providers will say, you're not menopausal if you're still having regular monthly bleeds. If you're under the age of 50, they're more than likely to say, well, it's not menopause, but actually perimenopause can happen at any age. Menopause can happen at any age. And the youngest lady that I've known and spoken with was 13 years old when she went through hers. So she became postmenopausal at 14. 

What could have prevented that? So a lot of women are facing this a lot younger than what we even realize. And the medical professionals especially, and I know that it's true - I have a lot of clients that are based in the states and America, - unless they are private in menopause care, they are not educated or knowledgeable enough.

(10:06):

So walking into your GP or your medical provider for help and explaining having things like heart palpitations or heart flutters or skipped irregular heartbeats, not just the flashes, not just the hot sweat, but other things as well, like tinnitus, ringing in your ears, or eyesight deteriorating really rapidly, especially for night vision, breasts becoming quite tender or swollen and changing in shape. Again, irregular period. So your menstrual bleed: you may have a shorter or longer bleed window. You may have a heavier or lighter flow, and if you've never been someone who suffered with debilitating pain or symptoms through your menstrual cycle, you might start to develop that.

Adele Johnston (11:04):

So there's a lot of these symptoms. I mean, we're talking hundreds…

Adele Johnston (11:09):

Different functions that estrogen is responsible for in the body. So as that starts to drop, we've even got things like brain fog or forgetfulness. We can lose our sexual desire and our libido. There's a lot of things.

Christin G. Gutierrez (11:27):

So are there any different symptoms for a woman who has maybe gone through a partial hysterectomy, though she wouldn't really notice a difference in her cycles?

Adele Johnston (11:44):

Absolutely. So if there has been any form of ovary removal. If we have both ovaries removed, then that would be an oophorectomy. If we have a partial hysterectomy, where part of the reproductive system, or the organs have been removed, it might be one ovary, there might be ablations to the uterus and the uterine lining, anything that is kind of in that space, then we always note that it can bring an earlier menopause in that situation. So what we don't specify and state is that yes, if you have a partial hysterectomy, you will then be menopausal within 12 months. Right? But what we can say is we know that any type of intervention with the sex profile or hormones have an effect. The ovaries obviously release these amazing estrogen hormones for us. Then if we have any of those removed, we are at a higher chance of an earlier menopause. The main caveat to that is if one has a total hysterectomy, so the uterus is removed, the ovaries are removed, and they are technically coming out of surgery already postmenopausal. So this is where a lot of women don’t really have it explained to them. So they'll go into their surgery and when they leave surgery, they may predominantly come away not even understanding that they've now had their estrogen, the ability for the body to produce and release estrogen removed from the body.

Christin G. Gutierrez (13:23):

That would be a huge shock. I mean, they're already going through a lot of changes and then to have that compounded on top of it -

Adele Johnston (13:31):

Completely. Absolutely. And we see it time, and time again. I've had a few ladies in the Florida region as well. We are all over the UK as well, and where they go into these surgeries and have not had that explained to them, so they come out of the surgeries and it can be years down the line before they start to say, look, something's not right with me. I am not myself. I'm really emotional and sore all over. My joints ache. I'm clicking. I'm just not me. I don't feel happy. I feel very… really low. And actually when we dig a little deeper, we find out that it was never even discussed: the opportunity of hormone replacement, or any support. It's such a disservice to females, to women. 

Christin G. Gutierrez (14:19):

 I can just imagine. So you're an entrepreneur and you're going through these changes, that is going to be so hard to deal with. So what would your suggestions be to a woman entrepreneur who is going through either perimenopause or menopause? What can they do to try to deal with some of these symptoms that they have and to regain -

Adele Johnston (14:50):

Their focus and regain control of their lives? Yes. This is a brilliant question, so thank you for asking it. It's one of the most passionate areas of menopause that I coach within. So my team and I support women all over, all types of ladies, which is amazing. We actually even support a lot of men because men are very much impacted by a lot of the menopause. So we say people, we support people through menopause, okay, all human beings. But what we appreciate with this is when we are, whether we're an entrepreneur female, or whether we are in a senior corporate role or corporate position, this can really impact our confidence in our ability to show up as our best vibrant, energized self. And over time, what we find is that at the moment, the current statistics and about 900,000 women resigned from their corporate careers, there's probably equal amounts who step away from their businesses because of menopause related symptoms.

(15:53):

So what we get to do here is we get to keep more women doing the amazing things they do with those amazing businesses. And actually, if we had more women running businesses in this beautiful world, the economy would be in a lot better position. Absolutely. We are very, very good at being able to juggle and judge and move a lot quicker. So we want more women to stay. So the key things to consider here are that if you're starting to feel that your confidence levels are taking a knock, if actually you think self-limiting beliefs are starting to take over, there's a lot we can do in the mind pillar of this reclamation three step formula. So one of the key practices that we invite our ladies to practice with us is daily gratitudes and affirmations. So if we think about the way that our minds and our brains are interconnected, and we have all these beautiful neuro pathways that do these amazing chemical releases and connections, what can happen if we don't learn and teach yourself how to be present in the moment in the here and now, we can jump into the catastrophizing future and the price starts to do its risk assessments and tell us things are really scary, or we can jump back into the emotional past and we can legitimately, in modern day life right now, change our state from being quite balanced to very overriding stressed by one single thought.

(17:33):

So what we want to be able to do is equip you with the tools for your virtual toolbox so that you can learn the practices of being present in the here and now, and the daily gratitude is one way. So what we tend to do here is we have multiple different ways of practicing this, but the easiest way is just to consider when you wake up each morning, what is one I'm grateful for right now?

Christin G. Gutierrez (18:03):

Yes. That's amazing. That sets the tone of your day.

Adele Johnston (18:08):

Absolutely. Absolutely. And then being able to reaffirm, so the affirmations practice comes in and we tend to look at, let the trigger for this be your morning shower. So if you're heading into the shower and you're switching the shower on, soon as you hear the water falling, you're then stepping into your affirmation practice. So you're washing your hair, washing your body, you're then showing self-compassion by clean cleaning and cleaning. But you're also able to then reaffirm, I am capable. I am worthy. I am the best at what I do. And the beauty in this is the brain then starts to say, oh my God, yes, I am.

Christin G. Gutierrez (18:52):

I am.

Adele Johnston (18:52):

Yeah safe. I am capable. And you're technically washing away all of that distrust in yourself as you emerge from the shower.

Christin G. Gutierrez (19:01):

I love that because you're also habit stacking, taking the habit you're building of doing your daily affirmations, and you're attaching it to your shower so that it's easier to remember to do those affirmations and create a habit every single day.

Adele Johnston (19:15):

Yes, exactly. So this is why we pride ourselves on making everything as really simple as possible because we've got enough to be contending with when we're not feeling aligned with ourselves.

Christin G. Gutierrez (19:27):

Absolutely. Absolutely. So what would you recommend to maybe some people out there that are wanting to start their own coaching business? Can you walk them through a couple of steps that would be really important for them to take to set themselves up for the greatest amount of success?

Adele Johnston (19:46):

Yeah, I love this. Do you mean coaching business in general or within the menopause space?

Christin G. Gutierrez (19:51):

In general? In general.

Adele Johnston (19:52):

In general, yeah. Okay. So depending upon, I suppose again, let's keep it as simple as we can, right? Yeah. Finding your purpose. So finding what it is that you really, truly love, and that again, the biggest part and whole of this business success structure is about looking at your niche or your niche, depending on how you see it. So niching down or nicheing in, into your area of focus. That is something that changed my entire business around from just being a generalized to a specialized one. So get

Christin G. Gutierrez (20:26):

That's a huge impact.

Adele Johnston (20:28):

Yeah, massively. So get very clear on who you are showing up to serve and understand that. I actually have a business mastermind called the Success Circle that we teach within, and this is to support women who are in the women's health and support empowerment space. So on their coaching business, as long as it falls in there, we support them with this. But one of the biggest things that we do there is we actually look at the ideal client avatar and how you show up to serve with value. This isn't about, we're not going fishing, we're not reeling people in to say, we want your money. What we're saying here is, can I serve you from a higher purpose with really high energy and feel aligned to that? So again, aligning to your client and knowing who you're showing up to serve so that you're messaging and you're marketing. Yes, we're clear.

Christin G. Gutierrez (21:27):

Yeah, you absolutely have to speak their language. If you don't speak your client's language, they're not going to hear your message. So yeah, that's spot on.

Adele Johnston (21:35):

Yeah. And then the third thing, so just these are my top three. The third thing would be really thinking of you in a resilient lens. So again, we understand and appreciate that a lot of these entrepreneurial businesses and startups carry quite a lot of fragility and risk within them that if you do not work to, for example, we do a lot of work with human design types. We don't work who you are and you don't appreciate where you need rest periods. Because some entrepreneurs are, I only need four hours of sleep a night. I'm off at 5:00 AM and they're kind of rattling on. Yeah. I am not one of those entrepreneurs. 

Christin G. Gutierrez (22:16):

Neither am I.

Adele Johnston (22:17):

That early. I'm a half past seven AM-riser. No, earlier.

Christin G. Gutierrez (22:23):

I'm an early riser, but I also go to bed really early. Yeah.

Adele Johnston (22:27):

Whereas, yeah. So it's playing to your strengths rather than me sitting here thinking, oh my gosh. Well, Christin gets into bed at 9:00 PM and she gets up at 5:00 PM. I have to do that to be successful. Yeah. Yeah. You don't, you need to look at your strengths, yeah. Where are your most energized stages of your day.

Adele Johnston (22:52):

Working to that, knowing that actually, it's like when we say work with your cycle, knowing when you're feeling confident and energized and knowing when you need a Netflix downtime break or outside for some steps for health and the fresh air. Yeah.

Christin G. Gutierrez (23:08):

It's so important. And I think that a lot of entrepreneurs, especially women, their natural tendency is to try to, they automatically feel guilty for that down time. They should be doing more and going and going and going, or there's something that they should be working on for work. And it's really hard to just step back and say, you know what? No, I need a break. Maybe I get up at 5:00 AM every day, but you know what? Today I need to sleep in until seven, and that doesn't make me lazy. Or maybe today after I get home, I'm not going to cook dinner. I'm going to order in, and I'm going to watch Netflix because we need that time to relax and unwind. If we're constantly, constantly going, it's only a matter of time until we're going to crash.

Adele Johnston (23:57):

A hundred percent. And I have witnessed so many females in the business space feeling the pressure of conformity. I have to be a five AM cluber. I have to take cold showers. 

Christin G. Gutierrez (24:10):

I'm not taking a cold shower.

Adele Johnston (24:12):

Yeah. My gosh.  

Christin G. Gutierrez (24:13):

For me, how can it get without burning my flesh off of my body? That's not, that's how I'm taking my showers.

Adele Johnston (24:21):

And yeah it is. It's this whole piece of one of my non-negotiables and how I do any coaching with any ladies, whether it's one-on-one for menopause care or whether that's for business. It's all about self cares resilience. We have to have it.

Christin G. Gutierrez (24:38):

It is. So would that be your greatest tip technique or strategy to achieve success?

Adele Johnston (24:44):

Yeah. If we were to say, what's your number one? Yeah, it would definitely show up for you first. Because without your inner resilience, everything you build is at risk.

Christin G. Gutierrez (24:55):

Absolutely. Absolutely. So what advice do you have for the person who's listening right now and they're thinking, you know what? I knew something was off. I just didn't know what it was, and now I'm listening to you and I'm kind of concerned that maybe I am going through perimenopause or menopause. What would be your recommendation of the next step that they should take?

Adele Johnston (25:22):

Yes, this is great. I'm a massive advocate of your body better than anyone. Now, regardless of how senior that medical professional is, your body is best because it's yours. So get very acquainted with yourself what looks and feels normal or abnormal for you. The second thing would be I, again, massively advocate, understanding our hormonal profiling. So running some bloods, but making sure that they are done from a vein extraction rather than a finger prick or any type of urine or saliva sample. So we want them to be from the vein. And the same goes. We have some guidelines around this from menopause societies that state that if you're the, sorry, you're 45 or over that we can do a lot of our care on symptoms alone, but I still massively respect what blood rentals show us from that. So again, contact your medical professional and organize some bloods to see. Now, in terms of the blood that we want to know about, we need to request these. So grab a pen and paper.

(26:33):

The blood that you want to be requesting is the number one estradiol. Okay. That's really important. We want to know what that's sitting at. The second part of your hormone profiling would be your SHBG six hormone binding globulin. Love these massive names, but ultimately what that hormone or that blood result is about is telling us how your hormones are being transported around your body. That's ultimately what your SHBG is there to do. So, right. If it's not working properly, then your hormones are not getting to where they need to be. Yes. Okay. And then your third one is your testosterone. So again, it's a female hormone. Ladies, this is not just for the males out there. And this hormone helps us feel like a complete badass. We get a lot of confidence from testosterone. So again, we want to know what your free androgen index is sitting at. So if they can run that - amazing, and as long as you can get those, we're in a good place to then understand where you're sitting.

Christin G. Gutierrez (27:42):

And if for some reason their doctors didn't want to order those tests, should they find another doctor who will advocate it? 

Adele Johnston (27:48):

So if you do believe yourself that you think there's something not right, and you want to run these, I've had inverted coms hormone blood panels done, and they've all come back as normal blood panels that will be run includes your LH, so Lutein hormone or your FSH, your follicle stimulating hormone. And those are not the two that we want to know about. We want to know about the other three that I mentioned. So if your GP or your medical provider will not run your bloods, then yes, I would look at for a couple of hundred dollars you can run some private blood tests. If you cannot look to do that, then you can, there's another opportunity here, you can reach out, and I'm more than happy to provide a link for them to do a free symptom assessment through my company. We organize these completely free, it's just a kind of questionnaire, an assessment that we do with you, and if it looks like your symptoms are in the high possibility of perimenopause, then we write you a summary statement that you can then share with your medical provider. And because it comes from a medical coaching organization, right?

Christin G. Gutierrez (29:03):

It's not just you being irrational and hysterical and self-diagnosing on WebMD.

Adele Johnston (29:09):

Exactly. Yes, exactly. And it's that whole piece of just knowing that you've got someone there that you can ask the question to. So we don't charge for that, and we feel for that. So across on my website, you can reach out to me through email or you can grab me on Instagram. I'm super active across Instagram, so you'll find me on there at the Menopause Coach. If you jump into Google and just put Adele, the Menopause Coach, then everything will come up. But I provide you with a link, Christin, if you're that description, and they can just access the assessment straight away from there.

Christin G. Gutierrez (29:50):

Thank you so much. Well, I really appreciate you coming onto the show. I know that our subscribers have gotten a ton of value. I just have one last question before you go.

Adele Johnston (30:00):

Yes.

Christin G. Gutierrez (30:01):

Would you rather do one-on-one coaching or group coaching and why?

Adele Johnston (30:08):

Okay. This is a great one. So for me, I am working with my energy type and working with who I am, I love people and I love to teach and educate one to many. So I love to do my certification as one to many. However, I vastly get a lot of energy from one-on-one. And the reason being from that is that I like to be able to tailor the support to the individual and see them flourish rather than it being a bit more genetically tailored to many people. So I've built my business all through one to one, and I find that that is scalable for what I do. However, I know many coaches out there who have built beautiful businesses scaling the one to many model, and they both have relevance for me.

Christin G. Gutierrez (31:00):

Right? Yeah, definitely. Needs to be your personal preference. For me, I definitely resonate with the education side of it, being one to many, and then the effect that you can have with someone one-to-one, and customize it, and the personalization that you can give is just so powerful. So I think it definitely depends on the individual coach and also what it is that you're doing.

Adele Johnston (31:26):

Yes, agreed. Agreed. Amazing.

Christin G. Gutierrez (31:30):

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