Own Your Strengths.
Build a Future Around Them.
Whether you are choosing a first path or rethinking your current one, we start with what you are actually good at - then turn it into work that pays and fits. For students, professionals, and the leaders they become.
"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
Two Starting Points. One Method.
Every engagement includes a CliftonStrengths assessment to help you understand your strengths and design a future where you spend more time using them.
Growing in your role, or pivoting out of it.
Whether you are re-energizing where you are or designing a different path, we build a career that fits you - not the other way around.
- CliftonStrengths 34 and a clear read on your edge
- A plan for the pivot, promotion, or retool ahead
- Choices grounded in evidence, not just fantasies
Choosing a path, not just a college.
Most teens pick courses and majors before they know what they are built for. We work the other way around - strengths first, then the paths that fit them.
- CliftonStrengths for Students and interest assessments
- Strengths translated into real vocational pathways
- Guidance for course and college choices that actually fit
Full 34 Report
On the instruments: we use CliftonStrengths - the 34 for adults and the Student edition for those still in school - with the Strong Interest Inventory, YouScience, and other validated tools added as the work calls for them.
Learn About theStudent Report
From Intuition to Data. From Data to a Plan.
Career advice is usually a hunch dressed up as a plan. We start with evidence, turn it into pathways you can actually walk, and leave you with action you own.
Discover
We start with a validated assessment, not a guess. CliftonStrengths gives us an honest read on what you are built to do well.
Map
We translate those strengths and interests into real vocational pathways - and you keep a written Strengths-to-Pathways roadmap at the end.
Move
Every session ends with co-developed action items. Small, specific, and yours - so progress happens between our meetings, not just in them.
The work before the work
Your pre-work has two halves, and they meet in your first session.
Before we begin - the data
First, a validated strengths assessment, so we start from evidence instead of a blank page. Adults take CliftonStrengths 34. Students take the CliftonStrengths Student edition alongside an interest inventory such as the Strong Interest Inventory or YouScience. This is the objective read on how you are built.
Your first step - 5 key reflections
Second, about an hour on five questions most people never sit still for. This is the honest, personal half. Here is what that hour asks.
Most people plan around two pressures: the fear of not having enough, and the pull to have far more than enough. Both distort the picture. We remove them on purpose and ask what an ordinary good day looks like a few years out, once money is neither a threat nor a fantasy. What shows up in that life, and is missing from your current one, becomes the target the rest of the work aims at.
Adapted from the Best Possible Self exercise.
You are more than any one role. Leader, parent, partner, friend, professional, and the person responsible for your own growth. This step has you name the roles that matter most, set the biggest goal for each, then admit which ones have been running on empty and what has been taking that energy. It is the Big Rocks idea made specific: the largest things get placed first, or they do not get placed at all.
Adapted from Roles and Goals, Stephen Covey.
Decisions get easier when you know what you refuse to give up. You move fast through a bank of values, keep the ones that are genuinely true rather than merely admirable, and rank your top five. What you leave with is a short, ordered list of what sits at your center, the standard we hold later choices against.
Adapted from the Personal Values Card Sort.
A fear left vague runs your decisions from the shadows. You name the step you have been circling but avoiding, spell out the worst you honestly imagine, then work each one: how to make it less likely, and how you would recover if it happened anyway. Looked at squarely, most fears get smaller. The wall turns into a set of problems you can actually handle.
Adapted from Tim Ferriss's Fear-Setting.
Thinking alone changes nothing. So before we meet, you run one small experiment, a test rather than a leap. The accountant curious about photography does not quit their job; they shoot a local 5k and send the organizers the photos. You pick one pull from the pages above, design a low-cost, low-risk way to try it in the next two weeks, and decide what result would tell you it is worth more. You arrive with real signal instead of another maybe.
Adapted from Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.
Bring It Together
Five steps, one picture. The life you would choose, the roles that matter, the values you keep, the fear you named, and the experiment you will run. Look back and one thread usually runs through your own answers, a direction they keep pointing toward. You bring that to our first session. It is where we begin.
Pathways. A 90-Day Program With a Finish Line.
Open-ended coaching is hard to judge before you have lived it. Pathways is finite on purpose: a clear start, a clear end, and a roadmap in your hands at the close. The best place to begin if you are serious about the work.
Start With a Conversation. Commit When It Fits.
The same rates for a student and a senior leader - my time has one value. Everything discounts from the single-session rate, and every path starts with a free call.
Free Intro Call
No pitch, no slides. You tell me what is prompting this; I tell you honestly if we are a fit.
- Twenty-five to thirty minutes
- For you or your student
- The match matters for both of us
Pathways - 90 Days
Assessment, bi-weekly sessions, and a written roadmap you keep. Priced as a program, not by the hour.
- CliftonStrengths + debrief
- Sessions every other week
- Strengths-to-Pathways roadmap
Ongoing Coaching
Special ongoing pricing for clients who finish the Pathways program and want to keep the momentum. That is $250 a month under a la carte, with the freedom to cancel on 30 days notice, no penalty.*
- Two 1-hour sessions a month
- Reserved for Pathways graduates
- Cancel on 30 days notice, no penalty
Single Session
One focused hour, no ongoing commitment.
- One full hour
- No ongoing commitment
- Action items to take with you
*Standard Monthly Coaching rate without Pathways is $600 a month.
I Will Respectfully Challenge You On Your Behalf.
I am Allen Abbott. I coach from a background as a former C-level operator, with an Executive MBA, a master's in Organizational Development, and an ICF ACC credential. I have sat in the chairs my clients sit in.
My work runs on evidence and honesty. I will not flatter you, and I will not sell you something you do not need. Based on the Front Range in Denver, Colorado, I work with students and adults alike on the same question: how do you earn a living doing something you are built for?
Book a Free Call. No Cost, No Pitch.
Twenty-five to thirty minutes. You tell me what is prompting this and what a good outcome looks like in 90 days. I tell you honestly whether we are a fit. The match matters for both of us.
Prefer to pick a time yourself? See my calendar