Who is Jonny?

Hi! Thanks for checking out the page on me! I’m Jonny one of the co-founders of Coaching and Motivation Limited alongside my wife Emily. Emily and I both value family and friends unbelievably highly so our relationships with those closest to us are always at the centre of our decision making. We are very lucky to have two young kids and a brilliant and supportive network of friends and family who we absolutely adore. 

I have always been totally obsessed by idea that people need to lead lives on their own terms, according to their own values and using their own definition of success rather than following the crowd or living according to societal tropes about what will make us ‘successful’ or ‘happy’. This unwavering belief guides everything that we do here at Coaching and Motivation and, if we are lucky enough to work with you, all of our work will be geared towards helping you discover your values, create your own definition of success and carefully plan your route to that success. 

In terms of my background, for nearly 20 years I put my heart and soul into working with young people as a teacher. I spent most of that time working as an RE, History and PSHE teacher at a range of Secondary Schools across southern England, including a 7 year stint as a Head of RE where I set up an RE department from totally from scratch and grew it to be one of the most successful departments within the school with notable successes at both GCSE and A Level. I also mentored trainee RE teachers at all of the schools I worked at, conducted school visits to check on trainees at other schools as a University Visiting Tutor for The University of Exeter 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 students or trainee teachers I was working with understood how vital it was for them to define success on their own terms and, I hope, this was a key factor in many students viewing me as a kind and to quote one of them recently 'human' teacher. 

Although I have always loved teaching, I knew from my experience with trainee teachers that I wanted to work solely with adults at some point. After I discovered the phenomenal Motivational Maps® tool in 2024 I decided to leave the teaching profession train to be a Motivational Maps® and Insights Discovery® practitioner and launch Coaching and Motivation Limited. Whilst this might, on the face of it, seem like a big switch from teaching as you can see, from my perspective, it really isn’t at all because I approach both roles with precisely 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 within my own Motivational Map® which are currently  the ‘freedom’ motivator ‘Spirit’ (at 38/40) as I’m now in control of my own work and workload and the ‘making a difference’ motivator ‘Searcher’ at (37/40) because the whole point of this company is to help other people. This is obviously critical to me because there is no point in me setting out to help other people discover their own values if I’m not living by my own! 

As well as being utterly obsessed with helping other people fulfil their own goals and ambitions, I like to practice what I preach so I am also obsessed with my own personal growth and development. I fulfil my own very high ‘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. As such, I am an avid reader of, and listener to, positive psychology and ‘self-help’ books and podcasts and I’m a fully committed member of Robin Sharma’s 5am Club. I am also unbelievably committed to lifelong learning more generally and my biggest challenge in this field is my bucket list mission to become conversational in at least 10 European languages. This language learning odyssey began as a non-political response to Brexit in 2016 and, after spending around thirty minutes a day on language learning for a decade I’ve now become conversational in German, Dutch, French and Spanish and have a good working knowledge of Swedish, Danish, Italian, Portuguese and Catalan. I haven’t delved into Norwegian or Icelandic yet but they’re still on the list! Learning languages has also been a great way to develop my own Growth Mindset because I can see the progress that I’ve made totally from scratch in all of these languages (save for a GCSE in German in the year 2000!). 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 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. 

In terms of passions outside of personal development and languages, I love playing beach volleyball and I’m a massive football fan and follow the England football team home and away. I’m also huge advocate for nature and love birdwatching and walking in the countryside as well as travelling and experiencing new cultures (and languages obviously!). Finally, I love a physical challenge and I have completed an eclectic range of bizarre and unusual challenges including walking from London to Brighton in 24 hours, ‘running’ the Brighton marathon, completing the 3 peaks challenge in a weekend, cycling the length of England from Lands End to the Scottish border, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and kayaking the length of the non-tidal Thames from Lechlade to Teddington. Whilst I haven’t completed any of these sorts of challenges for a few years now as my kids are still young I’m always on the look out for new challenges in the future so make sure you chat to me about this if you have any good ideas on this front! 

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. You can also see a list of my formal qualifications (and the year I was awarded them) since leaving school below in case those are of interest to you.

Thanks again for reading this! 

Jonny

BA Hons Philosophy and Politics, University of Southampton (2005)

PGCE in Religious Education, University of Exeter (2007)

MSc Educational Research, University of Exeter (2012)

A Level French (2024)

A Level Spanish (2025)

Motivational Maps Practitioner (2025)

Insights Practitioner (2026)