How One Woman Found Her Dream Job As a Life Coach

After decades working as a CPA, CFO, and CEO, Deborah Bailey chucked her career to become a life coach. She’s having the time of her life—and earning more than a $100,000 a year. She has twenty-three individual clients and also runs “money boot camps” which allow her to combine her skills as a life coach with her financial background. At the boot camps, she helps people sort out their financial lives, including looking at emotional issues that lead to money problems.

Bailey talked recently with DivineCaroline Career & Money editor Caroline Wilbert about the career change.

CW: You made a career change after many years as a CPA. Can you talk about that?

Bailey: I was a CPA for over twenty-five years, starting my career with Ernst &Young. Over the last ten years, I had worked as a CFO or CEO at a variety of companies and really just always hated it, but I had one daughter and I was saving for college and doing all the things I could for her and I forgot about myself. Then she went away to college, and my mom had been living with me for five years, and I just decided, okay, it is my time now. I moved my mother into a high-rise place, a seniors’ place, which she loves. And my daughter went away to college. And I sold my house in the suburbs and bought a loft in midtown Atlanta.

I spent the first year writing. I am a published poet and writer and I have some writing projects coming up. I had been journaling for years and trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I really couldn’t tolerate the CPA/CEO thing. At my last company, I was CEO of a publicly traded company raising money on Wall Street. The company had been de-listed from the stock exchange and they brought me in to see if it was worth turning around or if we should just put it out of its misery. Within two months, I said, let’s put it out of its misery. I stayed on a year, taking the company through its bankruptcy and doing some other things. I had high blood pressure. I gained weight. I was unhealthy. I was depressed. I just said I can’t do this anymore.