By the end of her introductory call with Gerard Grogans, Marissa B. already had homework. She had come to develop her voice and her message. In that first conversation, she says, the coach had listened for what mattered in her story — and given her something to work on.

“He had already picked up and listened to what I was saying and validated that there was something powerful there that needed to be heard,” she says.

Her video is captioned “The accountability speech development coach that I didn't know I needed”. It is an account of learning to speak, but also of the work she found beneath that task: confronting the fear of rejection, working through pain and accepting responsibility for developing what she wanted to say.

A message that could be heard

Grogans is a transformational life and speech development coach and the author of The Blueprint: How to Recreate Your Life in Six Simple Steps. Marissa’s account focuses on her experience of his speech development coaching, rather than the book’s framework.

She thanks him for helping her reclaim her voice and develop her message so she could “present it in a way that is clear and directive”. Clarity, in her telling, was connected to being able to solve a problem, not simply to speaking more confidently.

“He helped me find that my story needs to be told, but also to understand that my story is powerful and that it needs to be heard,” she says.

She does not describe the events behind that story. What she does identify is the fear that accompanied telling it.

“I was able to conquer my fears of rejection,” she says, before repeating the word “rejection” twice for emphasis.

The work behind the words

Marissa says she chose Grogans because his actions matched his words. “When he said he was gonna do something, he was gonna do it.”

The homework assigned during their first call became an early example of that approach. Encouragement came with an expectation that she would take part in the work.

“I didn't even know I even needed accountability partner.”

Looking back, she describes that accountability as exactly what she needed to develop her story for a powerful presentation. Her own responsibility was part of the lesson: “I gotta do the work.”

Finding the purpose

Near the end of her account, Marissa pauses while trying to articulate what she has learned about pain. She starts the thought, stops and searches for the word she wants.

“So through pain, there is going to be a purpose,” she says.

That is where she locates the value of the coaching: not only in making her story clearer, but in finding what it meant to tell it.