It was 2008, and Heather Barrett was a high powered sales exec working for a FTSE 100 multinational tech corporation. She seemed to have it all. The house, the car, the holidays, the designer clothes and the handsome husband.

The one burning desire that eluded her was a child. She tried to conceive for seven painful years but heartbreakingly she could not fulfil the visceral need to hold her own child in her arms.

“My heart shattered into a million tiny pieces every time I turned out not to be pregnant. My arms physically ached to hold my baby. I felt incomplete, without purpose, not a real woman, an outsider, broken.”

If Heather had become a mother, she would have named her daughter Sunday, and through the process of accepting that parenthood was not a part of her life’s plan, she created Project Sunday. A way to impart all that wisdom and experience she would have taught her own daughter.

Heather’s own story is so inspiring. She left the high-powered world of sales, left the bonuses, the global travel and 16 hour days. She took a leap of faith by getting out of her own way and finding her true purpose.

Like many high achieving women, she looked like a swan gliding across the lake yet underneath the water her legs were scrambling to keep her afloat. No matter how much success she had, she never quite had enough self-belief to see her true value. The stresses were always outweighing the successes. Until she discovered coaching and the magic it brought not only to her but to all her clients.

“It is very hard to precisely describe coaching, but what resonates is when I describe it as a confidential, nonjudgmental place to take everything out of your jumbled and jam-packed head, have it spread out neatly in front of you so you can see all the correlations and calmly figure out how you really think and feel about it. Then you can make fast and clear choices on how to be, or what to do, next.”

Heather has an amazing passion for empowering women to achieve their full potential. She has worked with business leaders at the height of their career to entrepreneurs facing obstacle after obstacle to young professionals trying to find out how to make those next bold steps. Her client list includes Lego, Yell, Arkadin, Semantic and Azko Nobel.

“If you’ve learned a lesson the hard way, then maybe the reason you did, was to teach others how not to go through it so painfully?”

Instagram: @allthingsheatherbarrett