From dancer to personal development coach: MATZ SKOOG

The interview was taken by Deborah Weiss in Summer 2019

Coaching is about taking a functioning person to excellence

He had a successful career as a principal dancer in English National Ballet, then as artistic director of Royal New Zealand Ballet, artistic director of English National Ballet, as well as a teacher, internationally in demand – Matz Skoog explains why he has become a personal development coach.

Tell me what a life coach is.

I tend to use the term personal or professional development coach because life coach has taken on rather lightweight connotations.  It’s a saturated market out there, so you need to define yourself, exactly what sort of coach you are and what kind of people you work with, in order to attract the clientele. I’m still working on it – defining my message. People don’t come to buy coaching, they come to solve a problem. No one needs coaching, it’s something you want because you have an issue or a vision. If someone asks me what I do, I say I work with successful, ambitious people who want to move ahead faster in an area of their life that really matters to them. People who have got stuck and need to move on, in their life or in their career.