Squarespace Website Design - Fireside Follow-ups x Invite Purpose Coaching
Watch:
Introducing Fireside Follow-Ups: Real Conversations About Design & Business
Welcome back to Fireside Follow-Ups. This is my series of relaxed conversations with past clients, digging into the real experience of going through a brand and web design project. The decisions, the process, and what actually changes afterwards.
This month I'm joined by Chris Baeuchle (try saying that surname three times…!) Founder of Invite Purpose Coaching: a Life and Work Coach based in Ireland who works with experienced tech professionals who feel like they’ve lost their way. Chris and I know each other from when we both worked at Komoot, bonding over vegan ice cream on a bike-packing trip in Italy. He’s since moved on too, so dig in to learn more about his journey in setting up his coaching business.
You can watch (above), listen (below) or read (further down the page).
Listen:
What we covered
This conversation goes beyond before-and-after reveals. We discussed:
The importance of authentic copywriting. Chris knew that he wanted to tackle this himself, and it was important that it felt like him
The decision-making process for hiring a designer, including what to look for and what to avoid
The journey we went on together including the challenges of when things translate a little differently to expected
The confidence a new website brings and finding your feet when you’re used to next-to-no digital presence before
The real talk
What I love most about this conversation is Chris’s focus on authenticity and integrity. It was important to him (- rightly so!) that it felt like him, from beginning to end. Whether that’s the aesthetic, the copywriting, or the photography.
Watch the full conversation to hear his advice for other new coaches looking for a website design, and why picking the right partner matters more than anything else.
Read:
(Laura, 0:06) Hi, this is Fireside Follow-Ups, the mini-series where I'm catching up with clients one more time to talk about a project that we collaborated on and this month we have Chris Baeuchle from Invite Purpose Coaching. I hope you enjoy.
(L, 0:22) Yeah, absolute pleasure to be catching up with you again and to just be like chatting through the project and yeah, shooting the breeze and catching up.
(Chris, 0:31) Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Delighted to be here.
(L, 0:33) Yeah, thanks. So, can you please just introduce yourself and tell us exactly what Invite Purpose is?
(C, 0:41) Okay, so Invite Purpose is a bit of a double meaning. So, there is invite, which is coming from the Latin invita, which actually means in life or through life, combined with purpose. It's because this is the work that I want to do and I want to help other people do the work that they want to do, but then also I want to help people be more purposeful and therefore invite purpose. I invite you to be more purposeful. So, that is what I decided to call my coaching company and I decided not to go with my name because nobody can pronounce my name, quite frankly. I've heard many, many variations.
(L, 1:21) How do you pronounce your name?
(C, 1:23) It's Baeuchle.
(L, 1:24) Baeuchle, there you go.
(C, 1:25) That is very, very good, I have to say.
(C, 1:29) Yeah, no, really, really. It's the sound that generally is challenging for the English speaker.
(L, 1:35) It's my German husband, right?
(C, 1:37) Yes, yes, yes. Okay, there we go. But yeah, I spent 10 years in tech. I worked for different sized tech companies. So, Apple, Indeed, Komoot. So, very large company, medium sized company and comparably much smaller company. So, I've seen very different types of tech environments and now that I'm no longer in tech, I kind of have a good idea of the things that can happen on the internal landscape for having experienced it myself, having dear colleagues, friends, people I've observed from a distance. So, I feel like I could read on what happens in tech environments.
(C, 2:23) So, I decided to specialise in supporting people in tech. And one of the things that really interests me and that's also what I'm writing my master's thesis on is identity and identity tensions. And from studying that, I stumbled upon the term imposter syndrome, which is something that I was very familiar with, both on an intellectual level and on a personal level. So, it hit quite close to home as well, but connecting that with my interests to identity, realising that it is an identity tension and now really deep diving it, kind of solidified also what I want to do in my coaching practise, which is really to help people overcome their imposter syndrome patterns, basically.
(L, 3:10) So, is it something that you, as you say, kind of like identified in yourself as like a hysterical pattern and then having been able to like work through something yourself and seeing the benefits to then want to work with that with others?
(C, 3:25) Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I could sing many a song about imposter syndrome. I don't associate myself with the label because I think the label is only useful in terms of being able to point at it and say, hey, here's the thing that we're talking about.
(C, 3:38) But I think actually associating with the label is not such a good thing because it's not a very kind word, imposter, right? To kind of go through life thinking I'm an imposter, that in itself is, yeah, it doesn't help with whatever a person might be experiencing. In a nutshell, I would say that's what the work is all about.
(L, 4:00 )Yeah. So powerful. And I'm sure we'll get into it, but yeah, you've helped me a lot and we've done a lot of work on this together. So, I can speak from a personal experience as to how powerful this work is.
(L, 4:14) So yeah, as you kind of hinted at, I guess, we both worked together at Komoot. So that's how we met. That's how I know you.Just to like set the scene of that, like, yeah, what were you doing there? What was your day to day? How did we meet? How did we connect? All of that stuff. Yeah.
(C, 4:33) My role in Komoot was, I was the customer support lead. So that was the title that I was given. There's a lot going on, but very, very defining role in my career.
(L, 4:51) In what way?
(C, 4:52) When I was hired into the role, I didn't realise how big the role was. And it took some time for me to grow, to be able to meet that standard.
(L, 5:03) Alongside that, you'd actually been training in coaching, if I understood right, alongside the day job at Komoot. So big respect there, Chris.
(L, 5:15) At what point did you decide to actually make it your career to make the change?
(C, 5:209 I guess the thought of wanting to become a coach was sort of ripening in my brain over a longer period of time. But then there was also the fear of not being able to be a coach for whatever reason, right? A fairly irrational thought that before I took the time to actually explore it properly, it was just like, well, I guess I'm not good enough to be a coach. But as any irrational thought, once I actually looked at what that means and understood that, okay, maybe there's just a few extra things that I need to learn.
(L, 5:55) What did it feel like the blockers were? Were they all mental, like self-limiting, or were there tangible things like the website, for example? Or were there these kind of practical elements too, that felt like they were standing in your way?
(C, 6:09) I think it was more of an identity shift. I never even thought about the practical things because I'm someone who, when I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it. So there's a bit of a high bar for entry because I know that once I commit to something, it's going to be done right. So I'd been learning NLP since 2018.
(L, 6:31) Is that neuro-linguistic programming?
(C, 6:33) Neuro-linguistic programming. Yeah, exactly. Which, to totally oversimplify it, is just understanding how humans work, how communication works, and how our mind works. But there's also a large part of NLP, which is NLP coaching, which is using those skills to be able to support another person to make change.
(C, 6:55) And NLP is, by its nature, very results-orientated. So it's really about meeting the person where they are and figuring out where they want to go, but it's like meet them where they are, bring them where they want to be, so to speak. What really helped me then was to stumble across this course in the university, in the city here, in Cork, that sounded very practical with a good mix of theory.
(C, 7:24) So I just said like, yeah, why not do that? It'll give me whatever I'm missing. So I wasn't even sure what I'm missing, or looking back, I don't think I was even missing anything other than I hadn't arrived in my identity yet of being the person who was going to be a coach.
(C, 7:40) And what was actually interesting in that course was that one of the requirements was you have to do 50 pro bono coaching hours to be able to pass the postgraduate diploma. And as soon as I saw that, I was like, well, if I sign up to it, if I pay for it, and then one of the requirements is to do the thing that I had been afraid to do, then that seems like a perfect mechanism to actually begin being a coach. And that's how it happened. I got so much more out of that course. It was incredible.
(C, 8:17) All of the things that I learned that supplement what I learned before with NLP, then I would say my coaching style is now very much a hybrid between the sort of ICF style coaching, which is International Coaching Federation.
(C, 8:37) So the standards that they set, they have core competencies, where it's just really, you're in service of the client, which I think is wonderful, but there is an element of it being a little bit rigid.
(C, 8:50) So, for example, in the traditional sense, you wouldn't mix NLP with it because it's quite directive. But I believe that for some clients and for some situations, the directive approach is much better. So I don't want to limit myself to only doing it one way. I want to meet the person where they are and bring them where they want to be, which then again, in itself is more of an NLP mindset.
(L, 9:14) And so our collaboration came about, as you mentioned earlier, you do these 50 hours of coaching calls with people to complete the programme. And I saw you post this on LinkedIn. And I was thinking, I know, Chris, we did that whole cycling thing together. Chris is great.
(C, 9:32) We did that vegan ice cream together.
(L, 9:33) We had vegan ice cream together. He must be good. Yeah, we both left Komoot or were in transition of leaving Camus for various reasons. And could have done with some coaching myself. So I hit you up and you very kindly, yeah, like really, really helped me out. We decided to do an exchange, basically, where I would help you with the website and you would help me with coaching. I can't remember whose idea that was.
(C, 10:03) I was in the process of shaping my coaching offer and to really get in touch with what is actually the thing that I'm helping people with. What is the problem that I'm solving? And through what I was saying earlier around, you know, working on my master's thesis and, you know, going down a rabbit hole of identity and then connecting it with imposter syndrome and then recognising it in myself and actually in some of the coaching work I'd done already, you know, I was really seeing these patterns everywhere, really. And I was building my programme and, you know, we had been talking about the website as well. So I was like, hey, would you like to experience this? And I was delighted when you said you're up for trying it.
(L, 10:49) Yeah. And just an amazing decision because literally, Chris, we would not be having this conversation. I would not be doing this like video series if we hadn't done that programme together. And that's just one of many, like, I don't know, just things I've not been scared to do since we collaborated. So highly recommend that programme. It's honestly just a game changer. And I'm so glad that I did.
(L, 11:10 ) And yeah, I was just delighted to work with you on the website. It's like the least I could do. Right. It felt like a nice little, nice little exchange. So I think the two were kind of happening in tandem, weren't they?
(C, 11:25) A hundred percent. Yeah.
(L, 11:25) Two projects.
(C, 11:28) A non-linear tandem. It was like, you know, a bit starting to stop. I think my 256 iterations may have slowed it down a little bit here and there, but I guess, you know, my first website and all that, I wanted it to feel like me as well. So that's, yeah, it was slower than it needed to be. But then at the end, just right as well when I saw what the result was. How it turned out. So I'm really delighted with the end result.
(L, 11:58) Oh, that's so nice to hear. What was it that you were really hoping that the website would communicate? Like what was the brief that you had in your head for it?
(C, 12:07) Because it is about inauthenticity and the solution to that. Yeah, maybe solution isn't the right word, but like the journey to go on is to become more authentic. So I wanted it to feel authentically me whilst also speaking to the person I was speaking to. Because I don't want it to be so self-indulgent that it's just, you know, my sandbox, but it didn't need to feel enough like me so that I could say, okay, well, this is actually an authentic expression of who I am and the work that I want to do. You know, that's quite big picture, but that's kind of the rough brief that I had.
(C, 12:45) And then try to get a little bit more specific. And actually one of the exercises that you helped me with was creating that journey as well. Wasn't it something based on the hero's journey and to kind of see how the narrative flow of the website is designed in structure. So that was very helpful to kind of bring the big picture vision into the more nitty gritty details of how it was created then in the end.
(L, 13:15) Because we originally looked at doing like a multi-page site, didn't we? And we were trying to work out how that information was broken up. And then once we went through and did the hero's journey, it kind of landed that it was actually complete in its own, you know, kind of one-pager form, which from a user perspective is actually a lot neater in this case. So that was interesting, interesting shift.
(C, 13:39) Absolutely. And that actually felt more like me as well. I like going to a the bones of what I need to know from just one scroll. And that's at least the intention of the one-pager that I have.
(L, 13:56) What was your online presence like before having this and before kind of launching into this? You mentioned that you hadn't really done social media before, for example. Was there any kind of digital home that you had before this?
(C,14:14) I actually had it deactivated for a couple of years because it really annoyed me at some stage, but I reactivated this about a year ago or something. And yeah, even now I'm just sending some memes back and forth every now and again. That's about the extent of it. So yeah, my online presence was fairly bare.
(L, 14:35) Yeah. I guess like you say, if there was no kind of like reason or purpose to it before, then it's just a whole different beast now, isn't it? You're trying to connect in a business sense with people that you can help. So I can imagine that gives it a real purposeful nudge.
(L, 14:52) And is there anything on your website that felt like an uncomfortable ask? You talked already about how the hero's journey helped to kind of structure things. Was there anything else in that process that shifted or clicked or, you know, something where it was like, oh, this is a bit out of my comfort zone, but I know I should do this?
(C, 15:16) It's not really connected to the process of building the website, but it was more connected to my own journey of starting in my purpose because I was very much finding my voice as a business owner and as a writer as well. Like, what do I sound like in text form? You know, it's going to be a little bit different to how I speak because spoken word cannot be directly translated to text. At least if you want to reach an audience, you can't.
(C, 15:48) Yeah. And getting firm around who I am as a coach, who I am within my purpose, who I'm supporting. Yeah. The copy just became outdated so quickly. I was thinking as well, I think there was like one point as well, where we went a completely different direction with how the site looked. And I think that's actually when we, right before we did like the hero's journey. And I think there was some conversations we had about like how the brand looks and feels.
(C, 16:18) I think before that point, there was like, you know, it didn't feel like me, but also I couldn't articulate it well because I don't speak the exact language of design. So maybe that was the other challenge in the process, which was then smoothly solved actually by, you know, going back to square one and saying, all right, what does this brand actually represent? What is the journey that you bring your clients on? And I thought that was brilliant.
(C, 16:48) And to be honest, I think the first iteration was crucial in finding the second iteration of the design, because even though they were quite different to each other, it was a great starting point and something to inform what would be included and what would not be included in the next design.
(L, 17:07) Yeah. So we started off with I think three different mood boards. So we did the whole discovery phase, learned about you and the personality of your brand and the customers you work with and all that kind of thing, went into these three mood boards. And then if I remember right, there were a couple that resonated, but you were really strongly for one of them.
(L, 17:28) And so that was when the first iteration came about. And it's always super interesting when I do this process with people, because it's quite often the case where, you know, they'll love the mood board and I'll think, okay, like I know what they're into now, like we've got this and then I'll translate it. And then when it gets into specifics, that's where the really interesting conversations happen, because these specifics mean different things to different people and they feel different ways to different people, right? So when we can start getting into like, okay, why do I prefer this font to this font or something, or why is that tone of blue different to this one or something?
(L, 18:06) I just find that kind of stuff fascinating. So I really enjoyed going through that process with you, even if, you know, it didn't necessarily feel super smooth and seamless. Yeah. It's such interesting part of the journey.
(C, 18:20) Yeah. I wouldn't say it didn't feel smooth. I think on hindsight, it's very clear that I thought I had a good idea of what I wanted, but I didn't know what I wanted because again, I was on that wave and like the identity was forming at such a quick speed where, yeah, maybe I was totally bought in on something on a Monday, but then by the time Friday rolled around, I was like, oh, I've discovered so much new stuff, you know?
(L, 18:46) Look at all these other options.
(C, 18:49) Exactly. Exactly. So I would say when we did the first mood boards, I fundamentally did not understand what I needed for a later point, or I suppose the business owner that I would become, which makes sense, right? But things were just moving so quickly that I thought I knew and took a good stab at it and it formed basically what the end result would be.
(L, 19:17) Yeah. And how did it feel, you know, when we landed on this final result and you think, okay, this is going to go live, I'm doing this.
(C, 19:26) Brilliant. Yeah. I mean, I was at the point that I wanted to get to, like, you know, I wanted to have a website that felt like me, that I totally stand behind. So by the time we reached the final iteration, I was just like, let's get it out there. This is great. I love this website. And yeah, it felt really good. I mean, especially after that many months of working on this, it also felt like freeing to just get it out there, you know, you just release the little passion project on the side and bring it out into the world.
(L, 20:00) Yeah. Interesting. Again, not necessarily me, but speaking to somebody, someone who's looking to hire somebody, you know, trying to find the right match for them, the right designer for them. What for you was important in our collaboration? Like what makes a good match, I suppose?
(C, 20:20) Oh, definitely the human part. I mean, I think if you have good communication and a good connection and you can kind of move outside of the serious things need to get done layer as well, I think then if the skills are available, a good result can be made.
(C, 20:37) I think that in general, it's being able to connect as humans is the fundamental of having a great collaboration, which is true for, you know, hiring a designer like we're speaking about, but also coaching like the science proves that one of the most important factors that determines how successful coaching is, is their coach client relationship.
(L, 21:03) Yeah, I can imagine.
(C, 21:04) If you don't like your coach, you're not going to do the things that, you know, you're not going to be bought into the process. Whereas if you like the coach and the coach cares about your outcomes, you know, that's just a nice human relationship.
(L, 21:21) Yeah. Yeah. Well, definitely true. And in this case, I am delighted with how it turns out and it sounds like it's working really well for you. So that's brilliant.
(L, 21:31) Just to kind of tie it all up, have you had any shift in how you show up since the website's launched? Has it maybe given you confidence or has it changed how you communicate with potential clients, that sort of thing? Like how has that component shifted your business?
(C, 21:50) I suppose I really started out building my presence on LinkedIn. And the big thing now I've been thinking about is like how does LinkedIn and the website, like how did they interface, so to speak? You know, it's a great website and I want potential clients to see it for them to be able to make the decision of like, oh, do I want to work with this person or not? Like, is this something that's useful? To be able to make an informed decision around what I offer and what it might do for them. And so, yeah, like how do I build that bridge between the two worlds? That's kind of the main thing that I thought about.
(L, 22:30) Nice. And so what's your website, Chris? Where can people find you?
(C, 22:35) invitepurpose.com.
(L, 22:36) Amazing. Thank you so much for chatting this through with me. I've had a blast catching up and just, yeah, reminiscing about the project. It was brilliant.
(C, 22:44) Yeah. Same here. Thanks so much for inviting me.
(L, 22:46) Of course.