About Us

Hi, we are Andy and Diane Nicholson.

We’ve made it our business to understand human behaviour and human potential, so that we can bring the best, most emotionally intelligent life skills to our clients.

Our purpose is to share with you how to become truly liberated from the inevitable conditioning of your upbringing and step into your unique potential. This in an important two stage process (i) release the handbrake and (ii) set your direction/intention and put your foot on life’s accelerator. You will find many therapists and counsellors who focus  on the former and many coaches to want to inspire you into achievement. What you rarely find is a solution that does both. Rarer still is a solution that is properly fine tuned to who you are as opposed to generic advice, or learning what has worked for someone else (who isn’t you).

Watch our short 4 minute video interview below to hear how we transformed our lives, overcoming failed relationships, redundancy and mid-life crisis, to not only start-over, but to start flourishing and living to our potential.

If you are facing such challenges, why not use this time as an opportunity to transform your life, to take stock, discover and live to your full potential?

Carry on reading below to find out more about us, our experience, qualifications, backgrounds and our personal development journeys – individually and then together. Scroll down, or click on the bullets below:

• Di’s qualifications, background and experience
• Andy’s qualifications, background and experience
• Corporate Experience and clients
• Our story

Diane Nicholson

Di’s training and qualifications are:

• Dip LC (Inst. LC), (Cert P.H./NLP), (Cert A.H./NLP)
• Motivation Method Therapist and Coach (M.Dip)
• Diploma in Life Coaching (Distinction)
• Diploma in Tutoring for the Life Coaching Institute
• The Enneagram
• Advanced Leadership Coach
• Licensed Practitioner in Advanced Hypnotherapy
• Master Practitioner of NLP

Di was Susan Jeffers’ very first ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway®’ tutor worldwide, delivering this workshop to over 2000 individuals over the 8 years, over 6 years of which she taught it together with Andy.

Diane is an empathetic, inspiring and accomplished coach, mentor, trainer, hypnotherapist, entrepreneur and speaker. Helping others to be their best and overcome their hurdles is Di’s greatest passion in life. She has coached and trained a wide variety of clients including: company directors, leaders and senior managers, head teachers, a world-champion athlete, teenagers, parents and women suffering from domestic violence.
Experience: Life Coach (8 years), Motivational Speaker & Trainer (7 years), a variety of Local Government Administrative and Supervisory positions (15 years) and Pension Fund Administrator (2 years).

Andy Nicholson

Andy’s training and qualifications include:

• Bsc (Hons) Sport Science
• Certified Prism Brain Mapping Consultant
• The Enneagram
• Advanced Leadership Coaching workshop
• Executive Coaching training
• 40 days of training at the Relationship Coaching Academy
• NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner

Coach, mentor and trainer, Andrew has a long standing interest in human performance and ‘what makes us tick’, stemming from his first degree in Sport Science. A qualified RYA Sailing Instructor, as an entrepreneur – Andrew has been involved business start-ups and raised business angel finance. He has experience of serving both public and private sectors, working in IT support, sales and training. Andrew’s experience includes 12 years working as a strategic marketing consultant/founding Director of a marketing consultancy. Andrew enjoyed two years living, working and training at a top European personal development and relationship retreat. He has worked as a personal development mentor and workshop leader for 7 years.

Corporate Experience

Andrew and Diane have a diverse range of experience within both public and private sectors.

Di has experience within the fast paced financial services sector in the City of London, where she worked as a pension fund administrator for two years. She enjoyed a variety of roles within Local Government before becoming the bursar and financial administrator for an academy school. Di managed to build her coaching business up within the space of only 18 months allowing her to replace her employed income and leave her job to pursue her dream.

Andrew’s experience includes 15 years working as a strategic marketing consultant and founding Director of a marketing consultancy that grew from 2 to 8 staff in five years. During this time he worked with a range of SME’s in the manufacturing and service sectors. He has also worked for IT companies supplying the NHS, local and central government, learning a lot about the public sector.

As Connect To Your Potential, Andrew and Diane have devised and delivered training:

• for University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI)
• as Associate Trainers for West Midlands Local Government Association (WMLGA)
• as CRB checked trainers and coaches for InnerFlame Teenagers Charity
• as regular trainers for Channel Islands Training and Development
• as invited guest speakers at the 2010 London Mind, Body Spirit Show
• also running regular workshops for a variety of other organisations including: Spice, various Yes Groups, I CAN!, Tree of Life and Women Unlimited.

Recent corporate clients include: BASF, Inverness College (UHI), Cantray Bridge Collage, Lambeth Council, Trevor George Entertainment, Warwickshire County Council, Working for Families, Women@Work (WEA), National Childrens’ Homes, Highland Council Social Work Services, Highland Council Education Services, West Midlands Training plus executive coaching clients from the MoD, Coventry Job Centre, Community Services Directorate – Henley Green Community Centre, Redditch Borough Council, Trident Housing Association, Wolverhampton Homes (Housing Association). Here’s a link to our corporate testimonials and to our solutions for organisations and corporates.

Our Story

Since meeting in the autumn of 2007 and our first year living and working together in 2008 – our learning has accelerated, resulting in our new brand, new and constantly updated workshops and this website. Prior to meeting, we had both been involved in personal development for about four years and had been working in the industry for a couple of years each. We moved from Warwickshire, to Inverness (where Di had previously lived for 20 years) in 2012 and got married in 2013.

After meeting online and a six month long-distance (Inverness – Austria) relationship, we both gave up our jobs and moved countries to be together and start our business from scratch. Despite feeling that we were well-adjusted, self-aware individuals, the intensity of this move led to challenges in our relationship as our egos clashed. This spurred us on to learn more about ourselves, each other, our egos (Enneagram types). You can’t truly learn about relationships and emotional intelligence from a book; there is nothing like a committed relationship to challenge what you think you know and push you to master relationships. We learned how to apply the generic relationship advice and coaching to our unique relationship and then learned how to apply it in a very tailored way to other people’s relationships.

Much has been written in recent years about the importance of ‘emotional intelligence’, yet there is little practical help out there to achieve it. Everything that we have learned and developed in our coaching and training business is about helping people to become emotionally intelligent, to be able to live, love and work with others in inter-dependence, and to live the self-actualised life of your dreams.