My Journey Through Business, Music, Life and Coaching

By Michael Kiernan

I've spent most of my working life dealing with people.

Sometimes that meant standing behind a bar, managing a busy pub, running my own business, organising live entertainment or helping an independent artist find their feet. Other times it meant sitting with a business owner, looking at a problem and trying to work out what was really going wrong.

Over the years, I've worked in hospitality, cleaning, entertainment, music, websites, search, e-commerce and business development. I've also trained in hypnotherapy and life coaching.

On paper, those might look like very different careers. But when I look back, there's a common thread running through all of them.

I've always been interested in people, how they think, the decisions they make, what motivates them and why some people move forward while others seem to remain stuck.

That interest eventually became the foundation of Freedom Design.

But it didn't begin with coaching.

Learning about people in the hospitality business

Much of my early working life was spent in pubs and the hospitality industry.

Anyone who has worked behind a bar for any length of time will understand that it's about far more than serving drinks.

You meet people from every walk of life. You hear their stories, their ambitions, their worries and their opinions. You see people at their best and sometimes at their worst.

You also learn very quickly that people are different. What works with one person doesn't necessarily work with another.

As I progressed into pub management, the responsibilities became greater. There were staff to manage, customers to look after, problems to resolve, entertainment to organise and businesses that needed to operate successfully.

I've managed pubs for other owners, and I've owned and operated my own pub and music venue.

When you're responsible for a business, you can't spend all your time discussing what might work. Decisions have to be made, people need direction and something has to happen.

That taught me a great deal about responsibility.

It also taught me the importance of understanding a situation before rushing into a solution.

Quite often, the problem you first see isn't the real problem at all.

That is something I've carried with me throughout my career.

Building a business from the ground up

Another important part of my working life was running my own cleaning business.

It included a laundrette, domestic and commercial contract cleaning, and gardening and grounds maintenance. I operated that business for more than ten years.

It was a different environment from hospitality, but many of the same principles applied.

There were customers to find and retain, work to organise, standards to maintain and people depending on the business.

Running your own business teaches you things that are difficult to learn from a textbook.

You discover that having an idea is one thing, but making it work consistently is something else entirely.

You learn to deal with uncertainty, changing circumstances and the consequences of your decisions.

You also learn that nobody else is going to take responsibility for your business in quite the same way you do.

I continued to work in bars during that period, and eventually returned to pub management and entertainment, which had always been a particular interest of mine.

Looking back, I'm glad I experienced both sides of business: building something of my own and taking responsibility for businesses belonging to other people.

It gave me a much broader understanding of the pressures people face.

Music, entertainment and working with independent artists

Music has been another major part of my life.

Through running and managing venues, I became involved in booking bands, organising entertainment and working with musicians.

I enjoyed the music, of course, but I also became interested in what happened behind it.

Why did some talented artists make progress while others struggled?

Why did some people keep building, learning and developing while others seemed to wait for somebody to discover them?

Over time, my involvement grew beyond booking entertainment.

I began working with independent artists, helping them think about their careers, their presentation, their opportunities and the practical steps needed to develop.

That eventually led to projects such as Livemicsworld, MusiBiz and World Indie Chart.

MusiBiz grew from my earlier work in independent music and became a platform designed to help artists develop their careers. World Indie Chart extends that idea internationally, giving independent artists a way to be discovered while recognising the work they put into building their careers.

What interests me most about these projects isn't simply the technology or the music charts.

It's the development of the individual.

An artist can have tremendous talent, but talent alone doesn't create a career.

There has to be a foundation. There has to be an audience, communication, consistency and a willingness to take action.

And the artist has to take responsibility for their own progress.

I've worked with independent musicians for more than twenty years, often giving my time without payment because I believed there was something worthwhile to develop.

Those experiences have taught me a great deal about ambition, commitment, expectations and the importance of being realistic.

They've also reinforced something I've come to believe strongly: you can help somebody, guide them and create opportunities for them, but you cannot do their part for them.

That principle applies just as much to personal development as it does to music.

Discovering the online world

As the internet became increasingly important to businesses, I wanted to understand how it worked.

I didn't begin learning search engine optimisation simply because I wanted to become an SEO specialist.

I wanted to understand the bigger picture.

How did people find businesses? Why did they choose one business over another? What made a website useful? How did search, marketing, customer experience and the business itself fit together?

That curiosity took me into websites, search, e-commerce, digital strategy and the wider online customer journey.

Over the years, I've worked with different businesses, helping them improve their visibility, understand their customers and make better decisions about their online presence.

I also became increasingly interested in how businesses could use technology to create better systems rather than simply adding more work or complexity.

Today, that work continues through my advisory activities and the platforms I've been building.

But despite all the technology, I've found that many of the underlying problems are still human ones.

People can become distracted by the latest tool, the latest idea or what somebody else tells them they should be doing.

Sometimes they lose sight of what they originally wanted to achieve.

I often find myself returning to the same starting point: understand where you are, understand what you're trying to achieve and then decide what actually needs to happen.

That approach has served me well in business, and it has a lot in common with how I approach coaching.

My interest in the mind and personal development

Alongside my working life, I've had a long-standing interest in how the mind works and how our thinking influences our lives.

In 1999, I qualified as a clinical hypnotherapist.

I later qualified as a spiritual life coach in 2019.

These were important steps in developing my understanding, but my interest in personal development has never been limited to qualifications or particular methods.

I've explored different ideas, approaches and ways of understanding ourselves.

Some have been useful. Others have left me with more questions than answers.

One thing that has always concerned me about the personal-development world is how complicated it can become.

There are so many different teachers, philosophies, systems and opinions, often telling people what they should think, believe or do.

For somebody genuinely trying to understand themselves or improve their life, that can create more confusion rather than less.

I don't believe personal development needs to be surrounded by complicated language or mysterious explanations.

I believe it should help people understand themselves more clearly and make practical use of what they discover.

And I believe people should be encouraged to think for themselves rather than simply adopt somebody else's beliefs.

Why understanding yourself comes first

One of the strongest conclusions I've reached over the years is that we often begin in the wrong place when we want to change something in our lives.

We start with what we want to achieve.

We make plans, set goals and decide what we should do next.

But how often do we first ask ourselves whether those goals genuinely reflect who we are and what we want?

Our thinking is influenced by many things: our upbringing, experiences, relationships, environment and the expectations of other people.

We can spend years pursuing things without ever stopping to question why we want them.

Sometimes we're following an ambition that genuinely matters to us. Sometimes we're responding to fear, pressure, habit or somebody else's idea of success.

That's why I believe self-discovery is such an important starting point.

Before trying to design the life you want, it helps to understand the person doing the designing.

What do you really think?

What do you genuinely want?

What matters to you?

What influences your decisions?

Are you making choices for yourself, or simply responding to circumstances?

These aren't questions somebody else can answer for you.

But having the opportunity to explore them through an open, honest conversation can make a real difference.

Thoughts, desires and actions

A principle that has become important in my own thinking is the relationship between our thoughts, our desires and our actions.

What we think about influences what we want.

What we want influences what we're willing to do.

And what we consistently do influences the direction our lives take.

Of course, life isn't always that simple. We don't control everything that happens around us, and circumstances can change without warning.

But we do have a part to play in how we respond, the decisions we make and the actions we take.

I've seen this throughout my working life.

An idea for a business remains an idea until somebody does something about it.

A musician can talk about building a career for years, but progress comes from the work they actually put in.

And somebody who wants a different life eventually has to make choices and take steps towards it.

Understanding yourself is important, but understanding alone isn't the destination.

At some point, it has to become action.

And that action has to be realistic enough to continue.

Why I created Freedom Design

Freedom Design brings together two important parts of my life.

The first is my experience of working with people, running businesses, managing challenges and helping others develop.

The second is my interest in the mind, self-understanding and personal development.

I wanted to create a coaching approach that was straightforward, personal and grounded in real life.

Not a complicated programme that everybody has to follow.

Not a collection of motivational phrases.

And not a system where somebody else tells you who you should be.

My starting point is much simpler.

Understand yourself. Decide what you want. Take practical steps.

I believe each person needs the freedom to discover who they are and then make their own decisions about the direction of their life.

That doesn't mean every answer will come easily.

Sometimes we need to question assumptions we've carried for years. Sometimes we have to recognise habits or patterns that are no longer helping us.

And sometimes we need to accept responsibility for decisions we've been avoiding.

But I believe that process should belong to the individual.

My role is to help somebody explore, understand, consider their options and move forward.

I'm not there to live their life for them.

What working with me is really about

I've spent much of my career in an advisory or management role, helping people work through situations, make decisions and take action.

Coaching is a natural extension of that.

When somebody comes to me, I don't assume I already know what's wrong or what they need.

I want to understand the person first.

We talk, explore their thinking and look at what matters to them.

As things become clearer, we can begin looking at what they want to change and what practical steps might help.

I also believe that meaningful change generally requires time.

A single conversation can be useful, but understanding something and making it part of your everyday life are two different things.

That's why I prefer coaching relationships that allow for reflection, action, review and accountability over a period of time.

The person I'm working with remains responsible for their decisions and their actions.

I can offer experience, perspective, questions, encouragement and honest feedback.

But the progress belongs to them.

And that's exactly how I believe it should be.

Still learning, still building

One thing I haven't lost over the years is my curiosity.

I'm still involved in business, technology, music and developing new ideas.

I enjoy building things, seeing how they work and finding better ways of doing them.

I also enjoy the quieter side of life, spending time at home, working on my garden and having the space to think.

I don't regard personal development as something you complete and then put behind you.

Life changes. Our circumstances change. We learn things, reconsider decisions and sometimes discover that what mattered to us ten or twenty years ago no longer matters in quite the same way.

I certainly don't claim to have all the answers.

But I do have a lifetime of experiences, lessons, successes, setbacks and observations that have shaped how I see things.

And I believe those experiences can be useful to somebody else.

What I hope Freedom Design offers

If there's one thing I would like people to understand about Freedom Design, it's that this isn't about becoming somebody else.

It's about discovering more clearly who you are, what you want and how you want to live.

It's about giving yourself permission to question things, make decisions and take responsibility for the direction you choose.

And it's about turning that understanding into practical action.

My own journey has taken me through many different businesses, roles and experiences. I wouldn't have predicted all of them when I was younger.

But each has contributed something to the way I think and work today.

Freedom Design is where those experiences come together.

And if sharing some of what I've learned helps another person understand themselves more clearly and move forward with greater confidence, then I believe it's worthwhile.

Michael Kiernan

Freedom Design — Personal Coaching & Self-Discovery