If anyone is living the dreamlife, it has to be Debra Johnstone. Debra is living in far north QLD and in her professional life she works as a transformational business and career coach. Most recently, Debra has been working as a transitional midlife coach, as well helping women entering midlife re-discover who they are and develop clarity on what they want in life. She focuses on women in their forties and beyond. Debra has had her own coaching practice for eight years but was initially working at a management level for small businesses. Her first pivotal moment came to her one day, on NYE, when she was de-cluttering her inbox and came across an old email about being a life coach. She immediately enrolled in a two-year certification. This change was triggered after Debra had reached a barrier in her career. She felt that she didn’t have the tools and skills she required as a life coach, even though she was good at it. Growing up in Leister, in the UK, Debra was bullied at primary school so she left school at the age of 16 and began working in fashion retail because all she wanted to do was make money and travel. She eventually landed in Australia and fell in love with the country and a man.
When the marriage ended, Debra became a single mum and did lots of little jobs in retail and as her kids got older, she moved into small business management in different areas such as retail and events. Inconsistency of income flow led to a stressful life and Debra burnt out. She was doing too many things and the stress led to adrenal fatigue. Full recovery took Debra five years although she was able to return to work after 12 months. This period of Debra’s life taught her the importance of letting go. She learnt to structure herself and created the Your Success Planner which is a two-yearly planner broken into daily amounts, based on giving yourself a structure to follow and setting goals. The Your Success Planner is a large spiral-bound book. Debra has also released a new program, earlier this year, for midlife women and beyond, for self-discovery. The greatest professional female mentor for Debra was Jo Attles, a four-time author and a weight-loss consultant. Jo gave Debra loads of marketing suggestions when she first started out and inspired confidence in Debra.
The biggest pivotal moment in Debra’s life was when her father passed away. This left a massive hole in her life and she lost motivation and direction for everything. However, her father also gave her a gift and she started building a community for midlife women. She found purpose again by listening to her intuition. This isn’t the end for Debra. Next year, she will be a certified yoga instructor and she has no boundaries anymore. One quirky fact about Debra is that she used to live on a barge in Leister and lived there for a year. Debra’s favourite business app is google my business but she also enjoys looking at realestate.com. If you’d like to contact Debra, you can reach her at success@debjohnstone.com.au or on her website.
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