Life Coach Takes Her Work To The Web Site helps restore passion to busy women’s lives

By Debbie Kelley

Published: June 22, 2008

Women often find that after fulfilling work and family obligations, there isn’t time for themselves. That’s precisely why women need a life coach, says Kim Fulcher, a Silicon Valley dot-com guru who last month launched a low-cost, online coaching network called Compass (www.mylifecompass.com).

“Life becomes so busy, whether we’re a mom or a sister or a wife or a daughter, we tend to put ourselves last on our list,” Fulcher said Monday in a telephone interview from her office in San Jose, Calif. “Life coaching can help a woman create a little time – no more than 10 minutes a day is required to take your life back to your dreams.”

The trick is not to find more time – because there isn’t any – but to make more time from woman’s wants and needs, said Fulcher, who will give a free workshop Wednesday in Colorado Springs as part of a 16-city summer tour. Fulcher will discuss how women can take back time and use their natural strengths to bring passion and purpose to life.

A personal life coach for six years, Fulcher six weeks ago took her ideas to the Web. For free, women can find advice on health, fitness, parenting, small-business success and other topics. For $19, $39 or $59 a month, women can access virtual online coaching, phone coaching and in person coaching.

Fulcher’s concept has grabbed the attention of Oprah and Friends, Fox News, where she wsa a recent guest, and Time, Family Circle and Fitness magazines.

“I came to life coaching from an early midlife crisis.” Said 37-year-old Fulcher. “I founded a dot-com company and had a lot of money, ran a technology consulting firm, had four kids and a happy marriage – but I was miserable because I had lost the connection with myself. I was enthralled with the results I got from a life coach but realized not everyone can afford that. Now they can.”

Defining what you want for your life and how you can make changes to get there is the first step, she said. Other suggestions she offers:

Prioritize things that are important to you, such as spending time with family or doing something that needs time to make your life run smoothly, such as paying bills. Write five or six priorities.
Look at a calendar and see where those priorities fit into your life. Usually, Fulcher said, they aren’t scheduled.
Find something every week on your calendar that is not a priority and remove it by saying no or changing commitments.
Replace that item with one of your priorities.

“Women not only juggle so many responsibilities as wives, mothers and career women, but they also are schooled or raised to believe they’re all things to all people,” Fulcher said. “You deserve to have a life you love, and you don’t have to stop taking care of everyone else to do that. Women are nurturers and will never stop that, but what’s important is that we take care of ourselves at least as much as we take care of other.”