Susie Briscoe, Global Business & Executive Lifestyle & Legacy Coach Mentor founded Acer Coaching Associates in 2004, and has guest appeared on various podcasts and radio stations, including Voice of America. Susie has written two 1 International best-selling books ‒ “Colour Your Legacy” & “Ascension to Legacy”, also contributing to numerous collaborative books. She works via Zoom thus travels the world several times in a day! Susie has dedicated her life to supporting charities, so it is natural that her work includes helping others to see how each of us are creating our legacy each day of our life. Her mission is to ‘’help you find the rainbows of happiness in your life” in order to understand our blessing.
Susie Briscoe, International Lifestyle with Legacy Mentor
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
The following few lines are my basic bio, although I get the feeling that you are wanting to probe deeper than that:
Susie Briscoe –Chair; Acer Coaching Associates
International Business, Executive, Lifestyle & Legacy Mentor/Coach; Author, International \1 Best Seller “Colour Your Legacy” & “Ascension to Legacy as well as author to multiple bestselling anthologies,
Susie works globally, with clients across 5 continents, 20 countries, 20+ States & Counties, and has identified 'Leading with Legacy' work as a major part of her passion.
“My main buzz is helping entrepreneurs understand their life purpose in such a way as to Live their Legacy as they walk through their life… moving them from a life of success to one of significance.”
This is about filling the gap, collaborating with people who have an empty feeling inside themselves for whatever reason and finding a way to give back to the world whilst recognising the importance of not wasting time as the clock continues to tick. Her clients include Chairs of International companies, Olympic athletes, royalty, men, and women globally who want to learn and grow their life ideals.
Headhunted by the Nightingale-Conant Corporation in 2008, and subsequently by Brian Tracy Intl., to become their freelance Master Coach outside the U.S., Susie runs her International business whilst remaining actively involved in these charities: Action Medical Research for Children, my first and heart-felt charity (and am currently an International Ambassador with them)… Currently a Trustee of Crossing the Gain Line which is a charity set up to bring leadership skills to the children of Myanmar based around the skills learnt from sports, especially rugby, as well as feeding the communities throughout the Covid lockdown of 2020/21 and ongoing into 2022.
Susie is also on the Advisory Board of the WinTrade Global Network, serving especially but not exclusively women around the world. Her role has an emphasis on Legacy and Contribution, focusing on how WinTrade is best able to serve the world.
As of the 26th October Susie has been invited to be on the Board of Advisory Directors of Femme 500; this is a relatively new network aimed at highly successful women around the world with an emphasis at the moment on the US and UK, founded by Ungenita Prevost – women who are thriving and want to spend time with people who actually share the same mindset and indeed are walking in those fabled “stiletto’s” and I’m really excited to be a part of these two networks; am especially grateful to be involved at the ground floor level with both.
I was invited to become Patron of the charity, Church Homeless Trust (CHT) when I retired, after nearly 30 years, from their Board of Directors in 2015; this was a huge honour for me and is a connection I value greatly having learnt to sofa-surf for a few short months back in 1996 when my late husband and I literally lost everything. I first became aware of homeless men and women as a very small child. We lived over my father’s wholesale and retail newspaper, cigarettes & confectionary shop, and when I looked out of the window, I could see various men and women just sitting on benches with nothing to do and nowhere to go. There were hostels for both sexes along the main road adjacent to where we were and every morning – regardless of the time of year or how inclement the weather, these people would be kicked out onto the street from 6am to 6pm. They would come into the shop to buy one cigarette (we would split open the pack to facilitate the sale for them) or a ha-peth of snuff (that would be a half-penny in old money), measured out using our brass scales (I still have them) into a little cone of greaseproof paper which we made especially so that they could afford it. Sometimes they would be totally out of it, having drunk some turpentine to ‘lift’ their spirits and give a break from the reality of their lives… this would be a poor-man’s gin, perhaps. So, for as long as I can remember, say from 3 years old, I was very aware in a tangible way of what the world looks like. If they were late getting into the hostel, that meant a night on the pavement as their bed would have been allocated to someone else. Bringing us up to date, nothing much has changed, except I like to believe that we are more compassionate to their fate. Certainly, CHT has helped in making this difference.
My other love is animals. As a child we had a family dog – an Airedale terrier whose kennel name was ‘Lady Julie of Ashtead.’ I absolutely adored her, and you can only imagine how awful it was when she got lost. Thankfully, she was found at Battersea Dogs’ & Cats’ Home which was just a few miles from us in South London. When I was invited to become a Trustee (Director) of this oldest animal sanctuary in the world I jumped at the opportunity, having first given a lot of thought as to what I would be able to do which would make me worthy of such a distinction.
I remained with the charity from 1989-2016 and am happy to have been part of its massive development and growth enabling it to comfortably fit into the 21st century having been founded in 1860. On leaving, the Board created a scholarship – The Susie Briscoe Scholarship – as my retiring gift, which is presented every year to a student who has gone through the latest development with which I participated in creating, the Battersea International Academy, which runs courses internationally to teach the preferred way of treating animals in a sanctuary situation. At one stage we had three Chesapeake Bay Retrievers and five cats and every time I moved, the animal carpet moved with me! In all, my current cats are about numbers 18 and 19 from Battersea.
As you may have gathered, charity has been in my DNA virtually from birth and I feel very privileged to have been able to serve and help so many beings that needed that extra boost. I would like to include here that family is most important to me of all. I was fortunate to have married Albert at age 23 in 1970 and our marriage was happy and lasted until his death in 2016, which, as you can imagine this took a toll on me as well as my daughter Lara and grandson, Sebastian [aka Bassy]. We pulled together and support each other, which means everything to me. Lara has recently started her own VA business – ‘YourExecutiveAssistant.co.uk’ – and this also has an International feel in that she received her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Italian & French which has proved so valuable when working globally. Bassy is at an exciting stage in his life as he is just about to take A levels in the coming year and is looking to work in finance with a view to becoming an entrepreneur once he has acquired the necessary skillsets and expertise. Once married, I retired from working as an Advertising Account Executive in a London Agency and then worked twice as hard as a wife and mother. Early on in our marriage we had problems in getting pregnant and this resulted in ten miscarriages so whilst we wanted four children all our bundles of joy were delivered in one package – Lara! Every cloud has a silver lining, and during this time I was introduced to Action Medical Research. As a result of my own experience, I started fundraising for them and was able to use the skills learnt during my work in advertising and PR – I quickly became known, as the local group of Friends of the charity had some remarkably interesting people on board, one of whom was Greville who would go on to become Lord Mayor of London in 1987. This is when I seized the opportunity and asked if I could have use of ‘The House’ for a day. Permission was sought from and granted by the Court of Common Council allowing ‘monies to change hands in this house.’ We had the most amazing day with the whole of the city of London participating, plus Couture Fashion Designers, and A-list stars from around the world, complete with stilt walkers, clowns, and everything else that would constitute a Fayre and we raised £155,000.00 in one day. It was amazing and at one stage it looked as though Michael Jackson would join the throng. Knowing what I do now, I would have founded a Chair with this money with specific interest in researching into problems in holding on to a baby once conceived and premature birth, but hindsight is always 20:20.
My main interest, outside of the above, is also set in doing what I can for ‘saving the planet’ – I say I do it one lightbulb at a time as I hardly ever use my electric lights except when extremely necessary… for example there is no reason to have a light on when on the computer or watching television, hence my one lightbulb at a time motto. Permaculture in its totality is so important for us to embrace if we are to make a real difference so that our grandchildren and beyond will be able to live the life we have enjoyed. Hopefully, we will have learned something in the developed world that we can pass forward to allow this. Whilst the industrial revolution did amazing things for first and second worlds, it has managed to damage so much of the basics of living and here I’m thinking of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs. If we are able to live a simpler life, there still may be time to turn things around.
What is your business name and how do you help your clients?
My business name is Acer Coaching Associates and although I am situated in the UK, I do have a global reach having collaborated with clients on five continents and even as I write that, it still is able to blow my mind. Having reached an age where wisdom allegedly resides in my own mind, I love that I am valued in a way not dissimilar to the Elders of past tribes. Sometimes this is no longer the case in modern society when the emphasis always is geared towards youth. I will take it on the chin if you say my generation were responsible in a way. I was a child of the sixties, and it was exciting being a teenager then and seeing the world change before my very eyes. Fashion and music directed much of this new thinking however I fear that we have pushed that Rubicon beyond its happy limits and hope that some of the old world ‘charm’ will remain amongst all the modernity that is always being pushed towards us.
My life experience in all its various forms from living in 3 rooms over my father’s shop to living in a 30-room mansion in West Sussex (UK) countryside within its own small estate – garden, paddock, copse and a larger area of woodland, in all just under 30 acres – and then on losing all that to the trauma of sofa-surfing - and not forgetting my volunteering on the annual committee of 4 individual Lord Mayors of London (think Dick Whittington … and they actually have more clout within the square mile of the City of London than the Monarch) – has given me an extraordinary breadth of experience which I bring to my work with clients. It is my belief that leaving a legacy – which is what my passion is all about – is not something in the preserve of the wealthy. It is something that each of us – from road-sweepers to Monarch’s and everyone in between – actually does each day of our lives. I help people understand that a legacy is created by each of us, as we walk through every day, whether we want to or not… it is being mindful of how we live our lives which decides what is important as to how we will be remembered. I love collaborating with my different clients helping them find what is most important to them and how this can be shaped into something really fulfilling to reflect back on before we cross the Rainbow Bridge.
What kind of audience do you target your business towards?
I thought I was aiming for an older age group to start with, but reality has shown that some people from 45+ years of age are already thinking about where they are in life, how they got there and what they could have done differently – I encourage them to look at opportunities arising from their life and business experiences and we generally look at beliefs, mindset, and values to ensure there is a completeness to the approach.
What are your current goals for your business?
For the moment I want to continue working one on one with extremely specific people who feel they have come to a stop in their lives, both in business and how they view their personal life as well. They have usually experienced success in their life and yet there is still that ‘not quite definable nugget’ that is missing. This is when I like to ‘swoop’ in and help them turn their successful life into one of significance. I really enjoy the one-to-one experience and love to see my client rise from what had been a demise into something approaching a phoenix … I’m sure you know what I mean. It is always so amazing for them as well as their family as well, because, of course, everything closely interacts with everything else.
I find my clients through referrals, as well as networking. Thank goodness for Zoom, as this was a complete game changer when we entered the stormy days of Covid.
What would you like to achieve for yourself and your business in the future?
Many years back I wanted to conquer the world and take no prisoners; however, wisdom prevails at last! I have realised that the Empire is not important to me as much as helping individuals is, which is why I prefer the one-to-one model. Yes, it’s fun to interact with a lot of people, but like all relationships, it is when one realises the importance of actually getting into a real conversation rather than skipping across the surface of a subject, that one can really start to make a difference that has the power to have a lasting effect. That change can be significant simply at a familial level, and also on a broader front depending on how big the vision is. My vision for my clients doesn’t even stop at the horizon – we go far beyond that and aim for the moon, stars, and planets because that way I can be sure that together we will definitely guarantee that we easily jump over the tallest trees.
Who inspires you to be the best that you can be?
Inspiration comes from different people at different times in our lives. It is always family first, and that still holds true… in his lifetime it was my husband, Albert and gradually one realises that at least one other person is involved and for me it is now two others: my daughter and my grandson. I love to lead from the front (as well as being a part of a team) and so I hope to have been modelling a way of life for both of them, just as we are all standing on the shoulders of those giants who came before us and showed each of us the way. HM the late Queen, on a professional level, was a great inspiration: globally, as well as being personal to me, as I was fortunate enough to have been presented to her on several occasions and then in turn tasked with presenting others to her. Her sense of duty was worn lightly and never seemed to be a burden and I think this is true for so many of us when we feel we have the right fit – that we are comfortable in our own skin and understand that there is no point in wanting to be someone else, because all those roles are taken!
What is your work inspired by?
This question reminds me of when I was studying to become a Coach and I had glanced through all the sections that were covered in the course. Nothing really stood out for me, until I actually got down to writing the answers to all the exam questions. It was when I was attempting to answer the rapport section of questions, and this had me totally stuck… it was like having feet in deep snow on the side of a mountain. I could see the footpath – this did in fact happen to me! – but it still escaped me. I could not overcome the barrier that would show me the way. When I shared this with my fellow students, they couldn’t believe it and it was only after being coached by several of them that the penny dropped: the reason I was having so much trouble with Rapport and how to build it was because I just did it naturally. Duh! No wonder I didn’t know how to write about it; it was just intangible and yet a significant part of me. This is the case with my Legacy work. The whole of my adult life – well actually even whilst at school I was the charity monitor – I have been drawn to doing things voluntarily. To helping others, and my life experiences have guided me in showing me where help is needed. When we lost our home and everything, it was ghastly, and now I see it was a gift. Unpleasant at the time but the lessons learnt from it enabled me to understand what homelessness is really like not just looking out of my parents living room window, but from the inside out. There are other examples of this, but I think the short answer to the question is ‘Life’ in all its rich colours and tapestries.
Tell us about your greatest career achievement so far.
Am I able to claim my marriage, my daughter and grandson? Probably not as the question says career. There have been so many over the years and I say that not intending it to be mis-heard or misconceived as being arrogant. When I first started work after college, I went on to become an advertising account executive at a time when women in the office were mainly thought of as being typists, and making coffee for the chaps. I had my own secretary and my own company car all before the age of twenty-three, which as I said is when I ‘retired’. Then, getting involved with married and family life to ensure that everyone – including the dogs, cats, fish, hens, ducks, tortoise, and terrapin… don’t think I’ve forgotten anyone! … was being looked after. Oh yes, Husband! Just teasing. Becoming involved in charity work at a local level before being elevated courtesy of Greville and my other three Lord Mayor’s into a completely different stratosphere, involving several members of The British Royal Family, many of the top people in business in the City as well as A-listers from around the world. I had chaired the 150th Celebrations and Gala evening for Battersea Dogs and Cats Home (an event that drew the attention of the Russian media as they enquired about covering us on our red carpet), as well as hosting Prince Michael, for BDCH, on the terrace of the House of Lords at an evening reception we ran there. Putting on some amazing functions at places as diverse as the local village hall to Earl’s Court, at Olympia (which is a massive arena where I hosted a London Antiques Fair for AMR), to Mansion House in London as well as an evening of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s (with Andrew and his wife there, with our guest of honour being the HMT Queen’s sister, HRH Princess Margaret) music at the unbelievable venue of St. Paul’s Cathedral… I had become a Yummy-Mummy before the words had even been coined.
As a result of being on the Boards of ‘my’ two charities, and later becoming Chair of a local preparatory school and then on the Council of the world-class Cheltenham Ladies College, many doors were opened to me, including invitations to Receptions at Buckingham Palace. When we were leaving the Palace, I suddenly decided I needed to visit the Ladies Room. My husband said ‘come on … you never need the loo, let’s get home’, to which I replied ‘if you seriously think there is going to be any place here that I’m allowed to visit I’m not going to you are mistaken!’ I should also add here that I’d already insisted I drove our incredibly old Bentley through the gates of BP instead of my little old Peugeot… well he got the message. The Bentley was also driven through the Main gates of Windsor Castle on another private occasion…
I started up a small charity with a girlfriend to help educate AIDS orphans and neces sitous children around the world and went to visit schools and orphanages in Kenya and India to see how our money was being spent. Just thinking back, there are so many important episodes it really is hard to just select one. I think this is when I go back to my first response, which was to say that my greatest achievement is having a happy marriage and a healthy, beautiful, intelligent daughter and grandson.
