The Show Ain't Over: Executive Presence Coaching | Jen Coken

She came to me with a problem every other coach she had spoken to “solved.”  

Laura Bachman had spent thirty years in commercial real estate, financing, developing, and overseeing the construction of apartment buildings across Seattle. She was excellent at her job.

She was also, as it turned out, an extraordinary baker.

And every coach she'd consulted had the same answer: two websites.

One for real estate. One for baking. Different audiences. Different personas. Clean lines.

It made complete sense on paper.

It also made her feel like she was being split in half.

In one of our first sessions, I asked her a question.

"Is there a perfect recipe for a building?"

"Yes," she said.

I asked her another question: "Is there a perfect recipe for a chocolate cake?"

And then I went quiet.

(Silence is one of the most powerful tools I have as a coach. I can feel the exact moment when someone is about to have their own discovery. You don't rush that. You hold the space and you wait.)

She looked at me.

A light went on.

"Yes," she said. And she had this big smile.

I said: "If you want to be yourself, be yourself. Bring it all together. Why would you split yourself in half?"

And she did exactly that.

She put photos of herself baking on her professional website. She started dropping homemade truffles and cookies off to prospective clients. When her construction crews came in under budget or on time, she showed up with baked goods.

The baker and the builder stopped being two separate people. They became one powerful brand — one woman who understands that every great building, like every great cake, comes down to the right ingredients, the right sequence, and knowing when to walk away and let the thing rise.

Laura didn't need two websites. She needed permission to be one person.

After six months of working together, here is what she said:

This year, Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) Seattle gave her their Lifetime Achievement Award. She opened her acceptance speech like this:

"Give me a recipe, a set of ingredients, and I know how to put them together for a predictable and delicious result. My career, however, has been more like starting with a great recipe and then in the middle of cooking, finding out that the stove doesn't work, half the ingredients aren't available and yet you still need to literally put food on the table for your family."

Two years earlier she never would have said that in that room. She would have kept the baker hidden and given a safe speech about deals and square footage. Instead she stood up as one person and told the truth.

She received a well-deserved standing ovation.

Laura's story sounds simple. Stop hiding. Be yourself. Bring it all together. But let's be honest about why so many of you haven't done it yet.

Some of you built that armor because you were told you were "too much." Some of you built it because the system gave you no choice — because of your skin color, your age, or both. The reason doesn't matter right now. What matters is that the armor is no longer protecting you. It's capping you. It's capping your authority, your income, and your peace of mind.

I have a vision of a world of people at home with themselves. Not at home as in comfortable and coasting. At home as in: you walk into every room as one person. No armor. No performance. No tax. Just you.

You don't need another generic mid-year performance review. You don't need a coach telling you to write down your "goals." You need to stop fronting on who you are.

THE WHOLE-SELF STRATEGY: A MID-YEAR ALIGNMENT

• When: Tuesday, June 16th | 12:00 PM ET (Noon)

• Cost: Free, but strictly capped at 40 women.

• The Rule: Live execution only. No replays.

• 
  

This is a thinkshop, not a passive webinar. If you want to hide behind a black screen and clear your inbox, this isn't for you. This is a live, high-octane working session for women ready to drop the survival armor for an hour and do real work.

What we will execute in 60 minutes:

• The Asset Inventory: We will audit the "hidden ingredients" you've been editing out of your professional life and figure out how to bring them into the room.

• The Narrative Audit: We’re separating the hard data of your first half of the year from the toxic narrative your brain is making up about it.

• The Executive Decision: You will make one definitive move, not a goal, a choice, for how you will lead in the second half of this year.

  
  

The corporate stove might be broken. Half your ingredients might be missing. But you still know how to cook.

Click here to secure one of the 40 seats before the doors close. 

---

Jen Coken is an executive leadership coach, author of Make Imposter Syndrome Your Superpower, and founder of the Executive Presence Accelerator. She has coached nearly 10,000 leaders over 30 years and believes the most dangerous thing a woman can do in her career is become really good at being someone else.