As a boy Ed JC Smith was miserable. His relationship with his father was difficult, he wasn’t good at school and massively failed his exams. He got 3 E’s at high school which confirmed that he wasn’t very good academically.
Convinced that life was not worth living after failure after failure kept building up, he tried to throw himself under a train only to be pulled from the edge at the last moment by a good samaritan. Defeated, the stranger walked him home and made him promise that he would never give up and that his life could change. And it has, in a more spectacular way than that vulnerable young boy could ever have imagined.
Today, Ed JC Smith is a success by anyone’s definition. With a multi-million dollar coaching business, he now trains future coaches to set up their businesses, attract clients and scale up their courses to reach a far wider audience than one-on-one coaches can ever achieve. Having had a wide range of different coaching businesses in a variety of different coaching niches, he now helps people do what he has done himself.
“It’s not rocket science”, he says, it’s a method that has worked for Ed and thousands of others who are now set up in online coaching/consultancy across the world.
“I became a coach because I wanted to help people. My life started to turn around when I got a job at a gym and as I became stronger my confidence started to grow. The stronger I became and the more I learned, the more people I was able to help. It worked out that all the failures I had collected actually ended up giving me all the skills I needed to deal with the ups and downs of entrepreneurship,” he explains.
In his early 20s, Ed took a room in Harley Street, London, and started counseling. First, he worked with clients who had difficulties with relationships before building up to work with corporate clients to build successful mindsets. As he saw the results of his work he began to plan ways to scale up his business and he started to build an online community.
Finally having found a successful model, Ed JC Smith became confident enough to take to the internet to attract more clients before he created Clients On Automation, a step-by-step program for coaches that shows them exactly what he did to set up an online coaching/consultancy business.
Coaches and consultants cover a whole range of niches. He’s had members who want to counsel people on death, sex, menopause, business, building personal wealth, and more. Whichever niche his coaches carve out for themselves, Ed JC Smith has created a roadmap to financial freedom by showing his coaches how to achieve results.
“I’ve now created multiple successful online coaching businesses and I’ve created the career I want. I have time to enjoy my life, I’m planning to get married and my business now regularly turns over 6 figures every month. I’m wealthy, happy, and best of all I can use my earnings to give back,” Ed explains from his home in England.
Never Give Up On Your Dreams
This wasn’t always the case. Throughout his 20’s Ed worked long hours building up his coaching business and started a venture capital business. He was riding high when he lost it all at 27 after some bad advice and getting involved with the wrong people. The promise he made to that stranger is like a mantra to him, ‘never give up on your dreams!’, so rather than curl up on the sofa, he started again.
“Failure can be the best teacher, don’t be afraid of it,” he tells his students. He believes that his problems as a teenager and his failures in business have made him a better teacher. “Everyone is afraid of failure and when I talk to people about my experiences it makes them a little less wary of it. Failure can be the best thing that ever happens to you, you just need to create the mindset to deal with it,” he explains.
Now in his early 40s, Ed has published three best-selling books – including Coaching Business Secrets – something he is incredibly proud of considering he never achieved at school.
His signature course is a 7-week program that takes course members through the steps they need to create successful coaching businesses. Subjects include how to create online courses, how to define your target clients, how to attract clients, and scale up a coaching business using a clearly defined step-by-step program that has proven successful for thousands of fellow coaches.
He also talks about giving back. “Money has never been important to me but I have learned its true value by being able to support causes I believe in, and help others less fortunate than me,” says Ed.
Softly spoken and incredibly genuine, Ed has never forgotten the lessons he learned early on, nor the vulnerability he felt as a child. The good samaritan who pulled him back from the edge and saved his life has inspired much of his life’s work.
“I suspect the man was homeless, sleeping rough on the station. I’ve never been able to find him to say thank you but I worked with a homeless shelter for about six years, it was my way of showing my gratitude to him for what my life has become,” says Ed.
Helping Others Is Rewarding
Ed now travels the world and is available to support the coaches who are still building their businesses. His annual Bali retreat attracts hundreds of participants from all over the globe to a life-transforming experience that includes visits to the charity he supports. “It’s an important part of building a successful business, knowing that once you achieve your goals you are then in a position to help others. It’s incredibly rewarding and helps change people’s perceptions around money and success.”
As coaches, all his members start with the intention of helping others. Helping them to achieve their goals means Ed’s network continues to grow across the world. Defining his step-by-step program to success encompasses creating the right mindset, discovering gratitude, and finding the online tools that help each coach find their community.
“I’m not just someone who set up as a business coach, I’ve been coaching for my whole adult life and I love it and breathe it. I love what it brings to my own life; being able to give back to others, helping those in need, and knowing that what I am teaching will bring freedom to so many others, is what fulfills me now,” explains Ed.
No longer that vulnerable kid growing up in the suburbs, he is now a man filled with confidence and gratitude, and he owes so much of it to the kindness of that one stranger and the best coaching session he ever had. And he never gave up on his dreams.
