Should a coaching programme include a break? What one midlife coach found by accident

Short answer. For some clients, yes. Chris Perkins, a midlife transformation coach in Scotland, runs three month programmes for senior professionals in midlife. When holidays put a pause into a couple of them, his clients came back having done real work on their own. He now offers a break between months two and three on purpose. His clients have their own Coach AI for the gap, and it all fits inside the three months they already agreed, without more of his hours.

Chris coaches the person he says he needed in his late forties. His story, his videos and our full conversation are on his Still Human page.

The break nobody planned

Chris usually coaches a client over three months, straight through. This year, a couple of programmes did not run that way. Holidays, on his side or theirs, put a gap between month two and month three.

He expected a gap. He did not expect what came back from it.

What the clients have found is that break has been really productive for them because they've been able to research things or focus on things on their own.

The work had not stopped when the sessions did. It had moved to the client.

He sees the same pattern in a client he is only two sessions into. Chris lets people book sessions whenever they want. “He has actually been a fairly low user of the sessions, but is really doing a lot of work on himself.” Two sessions in, Chris says, he may have made more progress than any client he has had at that stage. “It's a delight to see.”

Building the pause in on purpose

A lot of coaches would note that and move on. Chris changed his programme.

I'm now building that in as an option with my other clients rather than three months continuous, two months and then a bit of a break, and then we come back for the last bit.

The total stays the same. What changes is the shape: time with the coach, time to work alone, then time with the coach again to bring it together.

Same contract, same hours

A break works best when the client has somewhere to take what comes up. For Chris's clients, that is Coach AI, the private AI each of them has, which works from their own sessions with him. With new clients, he now introduces it from the first session.

If they still need a bit of support or they have ideas, they have access to that, knowing that they still have some face-to-face sessions to follow.

For a coach with a full diary, the next line is the one to read twice:

Without it requiring more of my time necessarily, we can still fit it within that three month resource that we've contracted for.

The client gets support across all three months, the pause included. The contract stays as agreed. Chris's hours stay where they were.

It also gives clients a more affordable way to keep going. When a programme ends, a client can stay with Coach AI without paying for more sessions, at a price the coach sets, a fraction of a full engagement. The coach keeps the client, and the client keeps the work.

Starting with the most careful client

Chris wondered at first how clients would feel about AI in their sessions.

I was interested but was concerned about how clients might react to the thought of an AI note taker. And I was working with a very risk averse client at the time and I thought, well if anyone is gonna have an issue with this, I'll try it with this client.

The client looked into the security and privacy setup and was completely comfortable using it. “So far, all of my clients have been happy to use it,” Chris says. He explains CoachNova in the first conversation, before any session, and asks for consent to record.

It also ended a smaller problem he had lived with for years: “I would often struggle to read my own writing when I used to take my own notes, so all of that's gone away.”

What other coaches can take from it

1. Watch the gaps you did not plan. A holiday, an illness, a busy month. What a client does with unplanned time tells you what they can do with planned time.
2. Change the shape, not the size. Chris did not add sessions or cut them. He moved the pause to where it helps.
3. Look at what the pause asks of your diary. If the support in the gap does not need your hours, the same programme carries more of the client's own work, and your time goes where only you can help.
4. Start with your hardest yes. If the most careful client is comfortable, the rest of the conversation gets easier.

Chris tells the whole story in his own words on his page, with both of his videos and our full conversation: Still Human: Chris Perkins. His practice is at chrisperkinsmidlife.com.

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