I’ll start by saying that coaching is a super flexible, widely-applicable process that can apply to lots of people and areas of life.

But, here’s the answer to the question you actually asked:

Who I Coach:

• Attorneys, pivoting within and outside of the practice of law, regardless of years of experience
• Business professionals with 5 - 15 years of recent work experience, regardless of industry (corporate, entrepreneurs, creatives, and more!)
• Higher ed and public service pros looking to make a pivot into leadership or out of their industry

Areas of Coaching:

• Career Exploration and Change
• Career and Professional Development
• Leadership Development
• Planning and Executing Holistic Career/Life Changes
• Internal Contract Coaching (ex: corporate or law firm employee/alumni coaching, internal mobility coaching, talent development or performance coaching)

Not sure if you and I align?
Try me! Take a look around my site then find some time to chat with me. If I’m not right, I’ll try to point you in a better direction.

For coaching services, my most successful clients are…

• degreed professionals with at least 5 years of recent, full-time professional work experience.

• able to dedicate the appropriate time and energy to doing the work before, between, and after sessions to make the best use of time together

• actively engaged in defining success for themselves within our engagement

• “coachable,” meaning they are open to feedback and observations, ready to take action on your goals (including trying new things), willing to examine and test your assumptions and perspectives, and open and honest during our holistic, confidential conversations

For my other services, reach out to me via email or through an initial consultation to see if we’d be a good fit!

I am not the best fit for:

• Current full-time students or very recent graduates (incl. JD, MBA)
• Medical practitioners seeking roles as providers
• Investment Bankers
• C-Suite Executives seeking true executive coaching

Coaching is a supportive partnership focused on your goal setting, outcome creation, and personal management with individuals and teams. In coaching, the coach is the process expert and you are the everything-else expert: your subject matter, your life, your circumstances, what you are capable of, etc. You define success, you define the metrics, and you get the win.

Coaching operates on the premise that you—the coachee—are whole, naturally creative, and resourceful to identify and pursue solutions, and it’s the coach’s job to enhance your skills, resources, and creativity. Coaches listen, observe, and customize their approach to the coachee’s needs, seeking to elicit solutions and strategies from the coachee (not from the coach).

You are ultimately responsible for the action and the outcome, with the confidential support of your coach and any additional resources identified and pursued as part of the engagement.

Correct. Those are wonderful supportive relationships, but they are not coaching (and we don’t really offer them here). Coaching puts you in charge of your path and empowers you to make sustained progress and change under your own power. It’s more “teach a man to fish” than anything else.

Consultants step into a situation and substitute their judgment and expertise for the client, investigating, assessing, and diagnosing problems to prescribe and often implement solutions with or for the client. Trencadis offers light consulting services to teams and organizations, but this is not a substitute for coaching (and it’s not available 1:1).

Advising is a supportive relationship that relies on a Q&A model, with the advisee (that’s you) asking questions and the advisor telling the advisee what to do, how to do it, and when to do it by. There will be rare occasions when I may “advise” you on a norm or process, but you shouldn’t expect prescriptive step-by-step “advice” from coaching.

Mentoring is a planful partnership in which the mentor shares their personal experience and knowledge as guidance for a mentee endeavoring to walk the same or similar path. Coaching isn’t mentoring (it’s your time and you are the expert in your life!), but coaching can help you find and work with a mentor!

Coaching provides you with the space to focus on yourself, a partner to walk alongside you and help you “see the light,” and valuable resources and support, all of which ultimately translate into personal, professional, and financial gains for those who take advantage. Making an investment in your progress, confidence, and skills will pay off in myriad tangible and intangible ways.

There’s evidence for the calculable ROI of coaching all over the place:
FMI Corp. Report (2019)
ICF Report (2024)
MetrixGlobal Case Study (2002)

If you’re on a budget (or are a recent graduate), make sure you check out the coaching services offered by your alma mater. Many colleges, universities, and professional schools offer free or discounted coaching services to their alumni.

There are loads of things I haven’t done in my career, but I have spent over 11 years coaching diverse professionals to make and sustain change in their careers, so that’s something. I stay relevant with trends, norms, economic cycles, and training (incl. earning my ICF credential in Jan. 2025). That’s what ensures that I’ll “get it” to help you.

From my decade plus of experience, coaches don’t need to have worked in your field or industry or role to “get it” and be valuable to your process. Remember: you are expected to be the expert in your circumstances, and your coach is the process expert to help you sort it all out. Example: I’ve never flown helicopters for the USMC, but I’ve successfully coached several people who did: they were the experts, they examined and unpacked the details of their worlds, and I supported each of them with questions, structure, feedback, assessments, and other coaching techniques. They all got where they wanted to go as a result.

If you decide that we’re not a good fit, I’m happy to see if I know of coaches who might suit your needs better.

The short answer is no, I don’t redo resumes or LinkedIn profiles for people. But that’s not the end of the answer.

In my decade plus of doing this work, I have seen the power of working alongside someone to help them redo their own resume or LinkedIn profile, versus handing the reins and judgment over to a complete stranger. When you do that, you are usually left with an over-formatted, hard to edit document that emphasizes the wrong things. That doesn’t help you.

Most people are better off investing a little bit in coaching to learn resume best practices, how to create and utilize a consistent and relevant brand, and how to “tailor your resume” when you apply.

Through coaching, we can revisit the purpose of and evidence going into your resume, with you in the driver’s seat so that you are empowered to make any changes you want down the line. Hiring someone to “do” your resume doesn’t give you that control, ownership, or ability to make changes on a moment’s notice. Coaching does.

trenka-DEECE

Trencadis is a Catalan word, so you just learned a little bit of a foreign language. Look at you, DuoLingo!

You can! There are 2 scenarios where this usually plays out: (1) You want to buy services for an individual, or (2) You want to sponsor your employee(s) for coaching related to work.

In Scenario 1, you should work with the gift recipient directly to get started, because they are ultimately going to be in the confidential driver’s seat of their own coaching with me (or any other coach). Paying for the coaching doesn’t generally break the confidentiality, nor does it change the fact that the coachee bears responsibility for engaging in the relationship from the outset. All scheduling and intake conversations, incl. goal setting, will take place with the coachee only.

In Scenario 2, you are serving as contracted sponsor for institutional coaching, which is a service I offer to employers to support specific professional goals (ie, leadership advancement, performance alignment, internal mobility). As the sponsor of the coaching, you will be involved alongside the coachee and me once at the outset, and you’ll receive periodic updates on compliance and process only. Sponsoring the coaching doesn’t break the confidentiality for the coachee, nor does it change the fact that the coachee bears responsibility for engaging in the relationship from the outset. A slightly different set of rules apply, and we’ll discuss them at the outset of the engagement.