Who is Jonny?

Hi! I’m Jonny and I’ve always been absolutely obsessed with helping people to fulfil their long-term potential and lead lives in accordance with their own values and definitions of success. I’m totally committed to practicing what I preach so, as you’ll see from the information below, I am 100% committed to my own personal growth and development as well as being utterly focussed on helping those I love and those I am lucky enough to work with to achieve success on their own terms.

I am incredibly lucky to have an amazing wife in Emily, two phenomenal kids and a really great network of family and friends who I absolutely adore. You might have noticed that neither I nor Coaching and Motivation Limited have any social media presence whatsoever – this is totally deliberate and intentional. I think there is far too much online ‘noise’ and ‘distraction’ in today’s world and that that noise makes it much, much harder for people to focus on the things that truly matter to them – their own values, their own passions and the people they love. As such, I don’t have any social media apps or accounts anymore and I don’t want to create any to contribute to the online noise by posting constant updates about our work and services etc and instead want to focus on helping people to strip back the unnecessary distractions out of their lives and get laser focussed on what will really make a difference to their long-term fulfilment and development.

Plenty of people have told me that it is ‘impossible’ to launch and run a business in the 21st century without a social media presence but I am desperate to prove them wrong. I am fully committed to the idea that people talk about the things they have found interesting, inspiring, useful and valuable in their lives and given that our entire mission is to provide that sort of value in your life I am convinced that if we do this we don’t need a social media presence in order to succeed. I sincerely hope that if we are lucky enough to get to work with you that you will spread the word about what we’ve done and help us prove that organisations don’t need to contribute constantly to the noise and distraction of the online world in order to thrive. 

In terms of my background, for nearly 20 years I put my heart and soul into working with young people as a teacher. Whilst I spent most of that time working as an RE, History and PSHE teacher at a range of Secondary Schools across southern England I also spent a year teaching at Primary School and lectured several times on the highly regarded Religious Education PGCE at The University of Exeter. My passion in all of these contexts was always ensuring that the young people in my care learnt to believe in themselves as people, to fulfil their long-term potential and, crucially, to define success on their own terms rather than worrying about what other people think of their life choices. I have always been passionate about the need for people to do this to avoid living out lives that are based on other people’s expectations or tired old societal tropes about what constitutes a successful life which are, in my view, far too often based on the view that material success or perceived social status tied to a certain job title or role automatically equate to happiness. 

Although I have always loved teaching I knew that I wanted to work with adults at some point so after I discovered the phenomenal Motivational Maps® tool in 2024 I decided to leave the teaching profession and become a full time motivational coach and consultant. Whilst this might seem like a big switch from teaching as you can see, from my perspective, it really isn’t because I approach both roles with previously the same mission which is to help other people discover what they truly value and lead lives that are as successful as possible based on their own personal definition of success. This change of career also aligns perfectly with my main two motivators which are currently ‘Spirit’ (at 38/40) and ‘Searcher’ at (37/40) as I’m now able to direct my own time completely whilst also leaning massively into helping other people, like you and those you work with or manage, to discover what they truly value and lead lives that are totally aligned to who they want to be and become.

As well as being utterly obsessed with helping other people fulfil their own goals and ambitions, as I said earlier, I am also obsessed with my own personal growth and development and am an avid reader of positive psychology and ‘self-help’ books. I’m a fully committed member of the 5am Club and I fulfil my ‘Expert’ motivator through learning as much as I can about personal growth and development and sharing my knowledge as enthusiastically as possible in my work as a coach and consultant. Since Brexit, I have also been utterly obsessed with language learning and this is another huge way in which I fulfil my ‘Expert’ motivator. After setting myself the outlandish challenge to become conversational in all of the major western European languages I’m now just under a decade into my mission, and after spending around half an hour a day almost every day since then on learning languages, I have got to that level in German, Dutch, French and Spanish whilst also gaining a far more basic level understanding of Swedish, Danish, Italian, Portuguese and Catalan (which I’ll be working on over the next few years). I still haven’t delved into Norwegian or Icelandic yet but they’re also on the list! Learning these languages has been a superb demonstration to myself that anything is possible if you just keep plugging away at it bit by bit with a Growth Mindset because other than a German GCSE 16 years previously I went into this mission as a complete beginner and having hated French at school! As a byproduct of my obsession with languages I have also become fascinated by all aspects of grammar, the history of languages and the similarities and differences between all the languages I’m learning. To give myself an outlet for this learning I also run a YouTube channel called ‘The Language Lad’ where I discuss these sorts of topics which you can check out here if you’re interested. Whilst I have already expressed my views about the constant distractions of short form social media I have gained a vast amount from longer content on platforms like YouTube and Spotify (indeed these two platforms are where I’ve done virtually all of my language learning rather than using language learning apps) so I’m happy contributing to that longer form of online content. In terms of passions outside of personal development and languages, I’m also huge football fan, an advocate for nature and I love birdwatching and walking in the countryside as well as travelling and experiencing new cultures (and languages obviously!). 

I hope this has given you a flavour of the sort of person I am and what motivates and drives me in my work. Whatever your values and goals I’d love to be a part of your journey towards helping you reach the success you are after on your own terms so please do get in touch at jonny@coachingandmotivation.co.uk if you think I can help you in any way.