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Business and leadership consultancy set to soar

Executive coach Camille Trott is setting up a Bermudian-based business (Photograph supplied)

As an executive coach, Camille Trott has worked with everyone from Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank to the Atlanta Falcons.

Now she is setting up shop in Bermuda with leadership development and consulting firm Austin Trott International.

Previously based in Atlanta, Georgia, she moved to the island with her Bermudian husband, pastor David Trott, two years ago.

“Primarily, I will be doing consulting,” Ms Trott said. “I do a lot of business development, helping with new initiatives and launching businesses.”

She also does some speech coaching.

Since the relocation, she has been regularly going back and forth between Bermuda and Atlanta where she runs Austin Communications.

“Austin Communications has been going well in Atlanta,” she said. “I would really like to venture off and do the same thing here.”

Austin Trott International is incorporated now and ready to take on clients.

“I thought having a business here might make it feel more like home,” she said. “I am not one to just wake up and wonder what I am doing the next day. I thought maybe I could make an impact and be a part of the fabric of the community I live in.”

She sees Austin Trott International’s clients as being mainly small to medium-sized corporate businesses and entrepreneurs, but she is well equipped to deal with larger companies.

She first started working for AMB Group LLC in Atlanta 18 years ago. AMB is the parent company and investment and support services of the Blank family of businesses which includes the PGA TOUR Superstore, Atlanta Falcons Football Club, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and other things.

“I spent 18½ years working for Arthur Blank,” Ms Trott said. “I started my career as an executive assistant, but over the years I was promoted, but really landed in the communications space, and working with him directly. That is where the coaching came about because I was working with someone at a very high business level.”

She was in charge of executive communications. Any time Mr Blank had a speaking engagement, whether it was business, philanthropic or civic, she was responsible for his executive briefings.

“I was the liaison between him and the entity he was speaking at,” she said. “I was making sure he understood the audience, was prepared and preparing those briefings to him.”

Mr Blank hosted President Barack Obama when he visited Atlanta in May 2013. Ms Trott helped to co-ordinate the visit.

Eventually, she decided that if she started her own business in Atlanta she could help even more people.

“Most recently I did a year-long development programme for the Georgia World Congress Centre authority,” she said. “That involved corporate training as well as executive level coaching.”

Right now, in Bermuda, she is focused on making connections.

“I am trying to get out and get involved,” she said. “I have attended several BEDC events. I am in the process of scheduling a lot of different meetings with different people. I am really building relationships.”

Her plan is not to have an office.

“I don’t see that as being a problem,” she said. “There are so many meeting spaces in Bermuda. There are plenty of great venues here for workplace training.”

Being a small boutique company she has the ability to customise her approach to each client.

When it comes to corporate training, she develops her own programmes. And she tries to individualise them to each company. She doesn’t do “canned”.

“I go in and build a relationship,” she said. “I do an assessment to see what the company’s needs are.”

She has found that a lot of companies don’t invest in coaching and training for entry-level positions.

“A lot of corporate training is for the senior level executives,” she said. “I am finding employees feel more valued when the company is helping them to develop to grow into other positions. I build a development programme for administrative professionals on a management level. They can see themselves as thought partners and business partners and really feel their voice being heard. They have something to contribute so they are not just attending these meetings with the larger executives but really feeling like they are a player in the bigger picture. That has had great success.”

For more information call 704-4340 or e-mail ctrott@austincomms.com. See her website at www.austincomms.com