Introducing our newest Mobber, Thibaut Ottomer, a self-love coach from Antwerp, Belgium. He is running his company, Liberty Coaching with clients from all around the world, coaching them using his tools and programs.
Tell us a little bit about you
“I studied advertising in Antwerp and had several jobs in Barcelona, my last job before becoming a life coach was Business Operations Manager for a social media agency. When I was offered to take over the company I decided to not follow the ‘logical’ and instead follow my passion. Now I’m a self-love coach, I help people who are stuck or insecure find clarity on where they wanna go, I help them feel good about themselves and go for the life they want, I started from scratch with my project in September of last year.”
How did you find the Life Coach career?
“When I was young, my sister studied physiology and every weekend when she came back from school she would tell me all about it and introduce me to the mental world of people and I started to feel intrigued. I studied psychology briefly for 2 years in Belgium and somehow the term ‘coaching’ reached out and triggered something in me, so I decided to do a NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) masters in coaching.
I loved it so I started coaching my friends and that as a coach I need to tell my own story too. 10 years ago I was always a positive person but I was very insecure and I was super jealous in my relationship, I didn’t know where to go with the jobs, I was having an ‘ok life’ and I had so many questions I couldn’t be myself a 100% I wanted to show to the world.
At a certain moment when I lost my relationship, lost my job and I lost my place to stay in a foreign country, I was like ‘What am I going to do?’, at that moment something clicked and I decided to change my life the way I wanted to be and to work on myself, so that is a journey that’s still going on because I think we change everyday and we need to learn everyday.”
I lost my relationship, lost my job and I was like ‘What am I going to do?’, at that moment something clicked and I decided to change my life the way I wanted to be and to work on myself.
What do you think is the purpose of your work?
“I want to help other people, I want people to feel confident, feel happy, feel full of energy, knowing what they want and get there. We may know what we want but we need a push. Our mind is tricky, we love familiar things and that’s why it’s so difficult to go outside of our comfort zone but if you go outside, to the unfamiliar, there is where we can grow, we need to get into what’s uncomfortable and it’s worth it. We need someone to guide us through the process and that’s what I do. So I feel that there’s my purpose, I feel like I want to be my spark to the world and help as many people as I can.
I know it sounds cliché but I want to live in a world that’s a better place for everyone. If, for example, if I can help you to feel better, and happier, and live your life fulfilled, you will be happy but not only you, your environment as well because you will show that energy to your friends, to your partner, to your family, to whoever you’re surrounding, or to the people you meet in a bar. So if I can help a lot of people and all these people, all their environments, they get better we’re creating a better world and a world where we can be ourselves authentically, where we can feel good about ourselves. That’s the freedom you know and that’s why my coaching company is called “Liberty coaching”. I want to coach people to the freedom to the liberty of being themselves.”
if you go outside, to the unfamiliar, there is where we can grow, we need to get into what’s uncomfortable and it’s worth it.
How did you start your business as a life coach?
“I started doing it two years ago as a hobby, I set goals to either practice 100 hours or practice with friends. I did some extra courses about how to find your market, how to find your niche and that’s how I started everything. I prepared my Instagram profile and website, the programs for three months about transformation, the program on “How to boost your self-love” and the online workshops. I work now with people from Barcelona, Belgium, Canary Islands, Saudi Arabia, now with everything online anything is possible.
Also, there’s a lot of coaching going on right now, I think it’s really if you choose your ‘speciality’ to become an expert in a certain niche. There are so many aspects of the human so, there are a lot of different coaches out there. You have the business coach, you’ve got the health coach, relationship coach, self-development, etc. So every aspect of their life has their own coach. But you also have a coach that goes a very specific way like coaching for immigrant women or empowerment coaches. Last week, I was talking to a grief coach. People are getting more and more open to it because it’s becoming more accessible and it’s more talked about.”
Any future plans?
“I’m planning on doing an e-book, I also want to give back to the LGBT community and I’m planning to do some programs with them as well, some workshops, and this is all for this year. And then by dreaming big I want to create some kind of school with a collective of coaches, where we can all support each other. So for example, if you come to our center and you don’t know what you need, you come to us, and we see what you need to do to help and assign a specific coach. This is one of the ideas that I have that I would like to develop.”
How did you end up in Barcelona?
“For me, there are only two feelings: love and the lack of love. I came to Barcelona for love. So I met my ex-boyfriend in Belgium, actually, a week before he moved to Barcelona. So we dated for that one week and then we traveled six months back and forth. After those months I was like “No, I need to go now before it’s too late because everything’s still fresh.” So just moved here to follow along. I always said that I wanted to live in a country with palm trees and took that as a double sign. Years later that love has gone but I stayed in Barcelona, this has been my home for almost 11 years.
For me, there are only two feelings: love and the lack of love. I came to Barcelona for love.
After all those years I’m still a person who always likes to look up when I’m walking. I’m still amazed every time when I walk and see the buildings, it’s all beautiful. Every weekend is like a holiday. We can go to the beach and go to the mountains or just sit in the sun. And I think it would be nice if more people would realize these things because we are always staring at the phone. I mean of course I do that as well, but sometimes I have to tell myself ‘Don’t look at your phone’ and think maybe I can smile at the person next to me or watch the building in front of me. These little moments are not only good to appreciate what’s there, but you can show gratitude for it, these moments give your life one minute of meditation, one minute of rest.
Even though I’ve been living in Barcelona for more than 10 years, I’ll always be amazed by 2 things: the beautiful surroundings and the fact that every summer I get sunburned…”
Interviewd by: María Meneses