I'm Kerry.
And I'm buzzed that you're here
My top 5 mosts:
Most fulfilled when:
I’m drawing
Most in my power when:
I’m coaching creative souls
Most weak when:
I see a pair of Nike Air Max 90s I don't yet own
Most proud when:
I see my daughter
Most belly-laughs when:
I’m with my husband
I unequivocally believe that:
1. Your creativity is urgent – you, and the world, need it.
2. Creating art is not a nice-to-have. It's a fundamental need we've had as a specie since humans began [which is why you feel like ass when you stop making it].
3. We’ve a moral obligation to live out our true creative calling. Our creative ambition is ours for a reason.
4. The more we allow ourselves to fulfil our true, creative potential [not just settle for the ‘sensible’ version that feels within safer reach], the happier and healthier we, and the planet, will be.
My back story
The short edit:
BA (Hons) in Visual Communication back in *cough* 2002 | 20+ years as a designer and art director | 10+ years of self-employment | 5+ years as a mindset/business coach (certified as a NLP and hypnosis practitioner) | Mama since 2016 | Born again artist/illustrator since 2022
The director's cut:
1982: At 2 years old, my first crayon masterpiece was created on my mother’s wall.
1987: At 7 years old, I came SECOND in a school art competition [#TheInjustice] with my take on Garfield the cat. I adored drawing, and was never without my pencil case.
1996: Chatting to the career advisor at school, I discovered Graphic Design was a thing. It seemed like a safer, more in-demand career than illustrating. So a graphic designer I became.
2001: I remember being highly commended in the D&AD Student Annual at university and thought I’d well and truly ‘made it’ – that was it. I’d reached the pinnacle of my creative career. Thankfully, there was a little more to come :)
2002: I had the privilege of working with a catalogue of gorgeous indie brands, through to household names such as Uniball, Heineken and Disney over the next 20 years as a designer and art director (while being lit up by any illustration projects that came my way too).
2013: Despite feeling like all my creative career dreams had come true at the time, and working with an incredible team at my last agency, I couldn’t help but scratch the entrepreneurial itch I’d also been feeling. I felt the call to create something of my own rather than creating for others, and somehow make more of a meaningful, positive impact on the world while I did it. This freelance adventure set me on a path of building my own business and pursuing some beautiful projects along the way.
2016: Some of my proudest moments involved me creating a giftware and stationery line that was stocked in some incredible high street retailers like Eason & Son in Ireland; raising over £21k on Kickstarter [in 2017] to get my first mass-produced product manufactured – The Imperfect Life® Planner; alongside becoming a mother to my proudest achievement yet – my daughter Lola.
2019: The Imperfect Life® Podcast was born and not only did it reach over 30k downloads – it was also in the top 3% of all podcasts worldwide (3% of 2,761,435 podcasts at the time) #ProudAF
2020: My desire to make a meaningful, positive impact through my work, combined with witnessing my own results through investing in high-level coaching, led me to building a thriving, six-figure coaching practice and The Imperfect Life® brand, becoming certified as an NLP, Hypnotherapy and Time Line Therapy® Practitioner – and helping countless service-based business owners start and grow their own businesses too.
2022: After supporting some incredible creative business owners in my coaching practice, and feeling pulled [read: yanked!] to get my own sketchpad and pencils back out – my creative roots called me home.
Working more deeply supporting fellow accomplished creatives who are also looking to reignite their creative spark (and finally create the work they always wanted to create), alongside me building my own creative studio – came a beautifully delicious, full-circle moment.
A taste of how I work
If you’re not yet where you want to be as a creative, I can pretty much guarantee that the layers of your mind; the conscious and unconscious – are playing a big fat role in that. AND BREAKING NEWS JUST IN: I’m here to help them play a big fat role in fulfilling your true, creative potential instead!*
UNCONSCIOUS MIND WORK
AKA: Working on the parts you probably don’t know about, that make you who you are
Your unconscious mind is pulling the strings and calling the shots on what happens in your conscious world, based on what it believes to be true. And what it believes to be true, is based on the self-preservation tools you learnt as a littlun, the fear-based thinking that has protected you multiple times from danger and pain in the past, and whatever conditioning has been passed down to you generationally.
Your unconscious mind is designed to work on autopilot, to follow the program (set by your beliefs), and live by that program no matter what. If you’re stagnant and not changing anything in your life, it’s doing its job beautifully because you’re safe from ‘dangerous’ new things!
Which is why, when you only try and create change on a conscious level (i.e, forcing new actions or behaviour) and ignore the underlying causes of your existing actions and behaviour at an unconscious level, creating lasting change and the desired results can be really freaking hard. One step forwards, two steps back vibes.
Luckily for you :) I’m a certified practitioner in powerful modalities such as Time Line Therapy® and Hypnosis which are incredibly potent in identifying these subconscious root causes, unlocking your highest potential and clearing any painful emotions from the past – allowing you to bring forward lasting, conscious change and explode your creativity.
CONSCIOUS MIND WORK
AKA: Working on the parts you probably know about, that make you who you are
Your goals, your values and what’s most important to you, your go-to patterns, behaviours, habits and strategies (for both doing things, and not doing things!) along with how you live, see and operate in the world are just a snippet of the layers we’d dive into together in our conscious mind work. Using a combination of proven frameworks and personally tried and tested creative strategies, this work is all about making things happen.
Working and tasking you on this conscious level is important, because an effective coaching relationship requires effective, practical action to be taken by you, the client.
And not just any old action – action that’s completely tailored to work WITH you and your tendencies, rather than against them.
PLAY WORK
AKA: Working on the parts that you left behind, knowingly or unknowingly
Let’s call a spade a spade :) if you’re this deep into my website, you’re probably not living the full, playful, creative life you know you could be. When you reflect back to your 5-6 year old self however, I’m guessing ‘play’ was probably such a default setting for you, you couldn’t NOT play or make things into a game. As a result, your creativity, your ideas and your expansive thinking would just pour out of you like a waterfall.
Creative blocks? Creative schmlocks.
If only we could tap into the creative wells of our childhood selves ay . . .
Well that’s exactly what I’m here to help bring back for you, just like Justin brought Sexy Back – I’m here to help you collect all the parts you left behind, and piece them back together again so you can be the playful, fun, authentic you, and create in a way that makes you feel fully alive again.
*VERY IMPORTANT: There are other things that may also have a huge influence on your creative challenges so far (such as racism, misogyny, homophobia, complex trauma, discrimination, ableism, among many other forms of marginalisation), and I never want to play a part in negating or underplaying that. Your experiences are valid and inequity is real. Being trauma-aware, I’m here to meet you wherever you’re at and hold space for whatever your mind and body need to feel safe and inspired to grow.
5 FUN FACTS ABOUT ME:
1. At 3 I won a singing/dancing competition, despite falling over the microphone wire on stage
2. I moved to Ireland (for eight years) after knowing my now-husband for just six weeks
3. My celebrity crush is Declan Donnelly and he called me ‘Babe’ when I met him once
4. I married a journalist who became an international bestselling fiction author #coachwifeperks
5. My guilty pleasure is basing my meal choices on what's lined up for pudding. Always.
Want to know what my clients say about me too?
Yep! Take me there
