Kylie Mort is an International Amazon 1 Best-Selling Author, Educational Mentor and Performance Coach. Her mission is fuelled by the challenges of childhood trauma and abuse and supported by extensive qualifications across industries including education and health science. Passionate about literature, she writes both academically and creatively exploring the academic mind, self-awareness & the mind-body connection.
Acknowledged internationally for leadership, business and education, Kylie has also recently been recognized as a prominent Mental Health Advocate on LinkedIn based on her professional experience and the quality of her content. Kylie’s performance coaching involves bespoke mentoring packages supporting academic, physical, and personal success.
Four times the published author, her children’s book, “Little People Big Emotions” epitomises her mission to save children from suffering through empowering individuals with knowledge and solutions. As does her latest goal within app development, determined to provide a pocket-sized at-need performance coach, encouraging optimal performance with an ever-expanding range of offerings.
Kylie Mort Coaching Connection. Your logo sounds like you are a dating consultant, why would you choose that?
[laughs] I thought exactly the same thing! Being a wordsmith I was initially looking for the catchy slogan. Something with alliteration. I mused over a few different incarnations and originally tossed this aside for that very reason. I don’t coach couples as a theme. Yet, as I drilled down further on my goal and the core of my focus, it is about love. It was about individuals connecting with that which inspires them and fuels their motivation to succeed. For the primary school children I work with, it identifies connection with their ability to learn. The ability to understand how their mind works and how to decode the information being given. For the secondary school children it is recognising their innate talent and using these unique skills to succeed in any challenge that is put before them, regardless of the topic. Young people need to be taught how to learn and how to value their skills before they can engage in a topic, and this is the connection I nurture. When adults seek my assistance, they have forgotten their own intrinsic power to grow and develop. They are disconnected from their purpose and feeling like they don’t have the resources to reach their personal goals, whether that be in education, business, or life. We all have goals, and my focus is connecting people with their personal goals through empowering individuals with intrinsic education.
You just mentioned you coach in education, business, and life. Does that mean you don’t specialise in any of them?
I’m qualified and registered across all of them actually! My career began as a secondary school teacher with a double degree in Literature and English. I taught across five different schools from Years 7 through 12. I taught a range of subjects across Finance, Legal and English studies but eventually specialised in teaching Year 12 English and Business Management. Since resigning from state education I have run businesses in a variety of industries including education, consulting and heavy automotive. This gave me a broad range of experience in Executive and HR roles. I also work with the Ronald McDonald Learning Program through Ronald McDonald House Charities to support children in school settings, and post-pandemic, now online.
And what is the qualification for life coaching?
As a school teacher and a HR manager I saw EQ (or Emotional Intelligence) as a core component. Being a dedicated teacher I was focused on how individuals learnt and recognised that there is no correct way to teach, but rather, that each learner was unique and needed their specific needs catered for. Anyone can learn, they just need the right teacher. The more I explored this idea the more I became fascinated with personal development, and I began my journey of life coaching qualifications. This included Erikson Hypnosis and Neurolinguistic Programming. Then through my personal interest in the mind-body connection I trained in traditional yoga, child yoga, and a mindfulness program. After exploring every other pseudo-science I finally went back to university to study Psychological Science. I consider myself a Holistic Performance Coach because I have experience and qualifications in such a broad range of fields.
And your core mission is to save children, how will a book save them?
Children retreat into safe places when they are scared, damaged and isolated. I know this as I was one of them. Through childhood trauma and abuse I suffered emotional, psychological, and physical damage. I retreated into books because, for those moments I was lost in a story, I was somewhere else, I was someone else and I didn’t have to deal with my own problems. I have harnessed that experience, combined with my ability to craft narratives and coach personal resilience, to write a children’s book, “Little People Big Emotions”. It is a place that a child can go for a variety of reasons but when there, my teaching and coaching strategies target the needs of young people and provide guidance and solutions to common problems. It is a narrative that elucidates a child’s fears, frustrations and natural inclinations then systematically provides the answers for both the children and their teachers and carers. It is designed with persuasive literary devices that will encourage connection. Connection between children and their safe adults, and critically, connection between the child and their own emotions. The book is an educational resource disguised as a feel-good narrative with beautiful professional illustrations from the talented, Tiina Morton.
How can it be used as an educational resource?
Being both the author and a Literature teacher I was always planning to write the Study Guide. I have compiled a 7-page document that I offer as a free resource to support the advantages of the book. It covers explanations of the text itself, the themes and the symbols and literary devices used. It also covers the historical context (as I wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic) and follow up activities to support further development, including discussion questions and drawing activities for younger children.
You are certainly focused on teaching in all that you do. So, what are your thoughts on George Bernard Shaw’s quote that “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”
[laughs] This is certainly a tricky area…and an interesting irony that Shaw earned a Nobel Peace Prize when this is one of the most contentious cliches of our time! I feel that we are all teachers, we all help others to grow and develop, we all have a unique skill set that we can share. Those of us who choose to focus on this skill and make a career of it are drawn to it for many reasons. Mine was to protect children. I suffered terribly through childhood and adolescence and during a dangerous suicidal period it was a teacher who reminded me of the innate strength I had, simply from the fact that I had survived so much already. Her words saved me from myself, and I now want to provide that same light at the end of the tunnel for other children who feel isolated and without hope. I truly believe everybody has something they are innately brilliant at. Mine just happens to be teaching English comprehension. My sister is a teacher who is also an Olympic level athlete. We are all brilliant teachers when we are teaching about that one thing that makes us brilliant.
That could sound a little conceited, referring to yourself as brilliant?
I guess so. Yet, ultimately, we all need to know our worth and our value, and it may have taken me 40 years, but I now know mine. I was successful as a teacher earning a government wage, I was successful as a tutor earning a comparative wage and now, I am successful as a Holistic Performance Coach earning the wage I choose. People see my value because I know my value, and this leads back to my passion and my niche. My guaranteed commitment to every individual who reads my publications and works within my programs is that I will guide them to the inner strength, knowledge, and empowerment to live their best lives.
So there is more than one publication?
Yes, there are 4 so far. I always knew I wanted to publish but I wasn’t sure of the best way to go about it, so I tried a number of publishers and styles to explore the industry. In August 2020, Empowered Women Empowering the World was published and this endeavours to encourage reader resilience in overcoming adversity. In December 2020, Back Yourself was created supplying advice on running a successful business. In March 2021, Amazing Women of Influence: Heart-Centred Female Warriors on a Mission to Change the World! became available and it is a business lesson in brief, a really great resource for business start-ups who seek a variety of opinions. Then comes my passion project, “Little People Big Emotions” with the incredible support of Serenity Press and Karen McDermott.
Kylie, you are a teacher, turned tutor, turned business developer, turned author, turned holistic performance coach. What’s next?
The two main projects I am working on at present are not only my passion projects but also endeavours that don’t have any finite conclusion. I feel this is the space I will be dwelling in for the foreseeable future as it is both what I am most passionate about and where I see I can provide continuous impactful change.
“Little People Big Emotions” is a children’s book that can be purchased in stores and online, but it also the focus of my ongoing campaign to reach out to children. The Study Guide is available as a free download on my website, and I am available to assist without charge to school, library and parent group meetings, readings, and facilitations.
Likewise, the free educational app, “How-to-Write with Kylie Mort” will be continually updated and expanded to explore the holistic nature of my performance coaching. It begins with an English focus as did my career, but the goal is to continuously build on the offerings available encompassing all of my qualifications. It is comprised of writing templates, guidance and strategies, and additional in-app features levelling all the way up to direct one-on-one performance coaching.
And they both provide FREE giveaways, is this just part of your brand?
[laughs] My husband is forever rolling his eyes at the way I constantly give away time, resources, and energy, but to me it is a critical element of my alignment and congruence. Money was always an issue when I was growing up, we lived in a household focused on lack and the need to fight. I learnt important life lessons there and I am grateful for my learnings. However, now I believe that the focus should be on abundance and positivity and the need to connect. I know my difficult path has been so essential to developing my ability to be a holistic educator, drawing on my experience as a resource. Yet, I want to freely give my knowledge, experience, and support so no child ever has to experience this hardship for themselves.
How do people find you?
My website www.kyliemort.com.au has links to my publications and programs. There are free resources, discount codes and a variety of packages and deals also, including a Complimentary Call to Connect link.
I’m active on Facebook www.facebook.com/kyliemort.mentor, Instagram www.instagram.com/kyliemort.mentor and LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/kyliemort/ every other day and, as with my magazine articles, my posts follow an organic schedule exploring whatever daily musings may abound, hoping to offer positive and general advice for mindset and personal development (as well as beautiful images from my farm!)
