Burk and Isobel Esterhuyse

Would you believe me if I tell you that not too long ago, I was in your shoes or perhaps even worst of? Allow me to take you back to the year 2001 — way before I got started in the coaching industry, and share a rather embarrassing story with you…

Before we begin, let me assure you: I wasn’t always the go-to guy when it comes to coaching, transforming and empowering other people… in fact, I was anything BUT…

What you’re about to read is raw and unfiltered, and it isn’t all wine and roses. It is safe for work, but it’s uncensored in the honesty department. I don’t believe in sugarcoating the truth, but I do believe the lessons I learned along the way will save you months, even years of frustration.

I had severe anger issues from high school onwards. My nickname at school was “Prime Evil” (named after the Ghost Busters cartoon character that got red in his face, and blew out steam from his ears when he got angry). My father passed away from cancer by the end of my Grade 12 year, and like most people after school, I went to study agriculture and took over the family farming business in 1997.

When I started farming, the anger became even worse and totally out of control. I did almost everything that was known to me back then to try to get it under control. I also went on a few Biblical Christian camps, which only helped me to have it under control for a week or two. However, the control over my anger was short-lived, and the angry “Hulk” in me was back in action. No matter what I did, it just kept getting worse.

Now, I am not a quitter, and I never give up! I desperately kept on looking for ways to get this temper and anger under control, especially after getting married in 2000 and seeing how my anger was affecting my marriage.

In 2001 we took a summer holiday at a house on the beach, but the weather was not in my favour. I got very bored and went to a book shop to get a storybook. However, I did not walk out with a storybook, in fact, I walked out with the book that would change the course of my life forever. It was my very first educational book called “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, by Robert Kiyosaki.

The book was a reflection of his whole life from coming from a poor family to becoming wealthy and financially free. In fact, the most significant lesson I got from the book, is that you have the power in yourself to change and become anyone you choose to be, have anything you like to have and become very wealthy, all through self-education.

As I was reading through the book, I started to reflect back at my life to where I have been and where I am going.

One thing that stood out like a sore eye was my severe anger issues. I started digging really deep inside myself. What made me use anger so much and almost everywhere in my life? The answer that followed was really an eye-opener to me.

I have been using anger to protect myself.

The next question I asked was “protection from what?” The answers that follows really shocked me.

What came to me was the fact that I am actually a very insecure and fearful person. I had very low self-esteem and had been using anger to mask my insecurities from the outside world.

What followed next was a declaration I made to myself that day: “I will never stop developing and improving myself as long as I am alive!”

I started reading personal development book after book, doing course after course. All extra money was used to improve me.

With all this information, I still had my anger and fearful emotions controlling my life.

It was only when I started reading up about the Subconscious Mind and Emotional Gestalts that I understood myself and my emotions better.

Over the next couple of years, I studied various people’s work on the Mind, Emotions and Success, including more well-known modality, like Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Life Coaching.

What made my life turn around was when I discovered that I can use my knowledge, experience and Life Coaching Skills to create a new career for myself. I am blessed to have a life partner that also developed a hunger for change, and she is just as passionate as I am. We knew that this was our purpose and we wanted to pursue, it even against all the odds. What does a young farmer know about business and city life? Together we decided to turn our passion into a business. After doing a few more courses together, I boldly quite a successful family business and moved to the city so we can follow and live our dream.

Everyone from my farming community and even my family and best friends thought that I was mad and inevitably lost my marbles. Most of them asked me:
“How can you just quite something you are so good?”
“How can you give up your lifestyle for something you know nothing about?”
“What is this Life Coaching thing that you are going to do?”
“How will you sustain yourself and your family doing that?”

Never the less, I was on a mission, and nothing they said could change my mind. I moved to the city end of 2009. Like I said – I never ever give up! Some of the farmers made bets on me that I will be back within a year…: )

Yes, it was challenging building a new business. I had no mentors to guide me and therefore had to figure this whole new coaching and marketing field out on my own. As an Afrikaans speaking person, I could not even write or speak proper English. I was forced to write my own web pages and slowly improved my English. My website still had a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes but miraculously converted enough people to come for a free consultation session and mostly ended up becoming my clients.

I knew then that I have a gift and I can connect with people easily and effortlessly.

Doing one on one life coaching felt amazing; however, I was very disappointed with the progress that most of my clients were making. I started to question my coaching skills. One of my many successful habits is to strive for excellence, and therefore I took on a new mission: Finding ways to improve my coaching skills so I can have profound and lasting results with my clients.

This made me start to experiment on myself with new processes and techniques to address the deeper underlining issues that I still had. As soon as I got something that worked for me, I started to test it on my clients and got profound results. I would then teach it to my wife Isobel so she can also start using it in coaching and the results were amazing.

Within a year I created my very own unique coaching system that transformed and empowered my clients and at the same time resolved most issues and challenges that they had in only 12 – 16 hours of coaching. The biggest payoff for me was that the results were lasting and I got more and more referrals from my clients.

I was so impressed with the results we got in our coaching that I was inspired to share and teach it to people that also want to become a life coach. After creating a technique to get myself over my intense fear of public speaking, I did my Trainers Training and conducted my very first successful life coach training in December 2010.

Over the next 8-years, I’ve simplified my Coaching System, while at the same time making it more powerful, to such a point, that any person that has the passion for helping other people or themselves can learn and master the coaching system in a very short period and start transforming people’s lives.

I still see myself as a farmer but I stopped growing plants – I grow people now!

I am proud to say that today it is known as The Transformation Coaching System and it is equipped hundreds of coaches per year to transform, empower and raise the consciousness of their clients while making a very good living through their passion of helping other people.