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About

The person on the other side of the conversation.

Michel Guerreiro  ·  Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC)

You’ve done everything right. Built the career, maybe moved countries for it. On paper there’s nothing to complain about, and still a feeling keeps showing up. That’s the person I built Inner Lab Coaching for, because I was that person.

Michel Guerreiro, coach, standing on a street in Amsterdam

Where it started

I was born in Switzerland, where I spent my first years, and grew up in Portugal. Work took me abroad early: hotels in Portugal first, then Dubai, where I sold and organized exclusive events and experiences in five-star resorts, including the 7-star hotel Burj Al Arab. At 24, I burned out. Not the tired kind a weekend fixes. The kind where one morning your body simply refuses. I didn’t have words for it then, I just knew something had to change.

The fixing years

So I changed things. Three countries in fourteen years. Four industries: hotels, aviation training, online travel, then SaaS, where I became a Senior Customer Success Manager in Amsterdam. And next to all that, everything the internet recommends: self-help books, meditation, apps to get organized, sport, hours of mindset videos on YouTube. All of it fine. None of it reached the thing underneath.

The turn

Years later, after almost a decade of carrying it, I finally admitted I couldn’t untangle this alone. I’d tried plenty, with the same mind that built the knot. So I did something that had never been on my radar, because I’d always assumed coaching was for executives and the very rich: I started working with a coach myself.

What changed

It changed my life. For the first time I had a place to think out loud without being advised, managed, or judged. My wife, my friends, my family were always there for me, and still are. But talking this through with them was never quite the same: they’re not trained for it, and they’re living their own lives too. The coaching was different. One hour that was completely mine, about today and what comes next. We looked at the patterns that kept dragging me down, built new habits, set a real direction. Life didn’t suddenly become perfect. But I finally knew what I was living for and walking toward.

Why I coach

I know from the inside what it costs to look fine for years while feeling stuck, and what it takes to get unstuck. The listening, the empathy, the space, the questions: I’d used them for years with my clients as a Senior Customer Success Manager. But there it served renewals and company growth. I wanted the human version, where the only agenda is the person in front of me.

And there’s a bigger reason. When one person starts working on themselves, everyone around them feels it. They stop waiting to be rescued, take ownership of their life, and become steadier and more honest, the kind of person who makes others want to do the same. Partners feel it, teams feel it, friends start asking what changed. Change spreads person to person, and it always starts with one. Watching that happen, from the first conversation to who someone is a few months later, is the most inspiring thing I get to witness.

Deep conversations are where I come alive. I’m curious about people, I notice the small things, I stay calm when things get heavy, and I hear what’s underneath the words. Creating space for someone to think out loud has always come naturally to me. Coaching is the first thing I’ve found that uses all of it: the curiosity, the listening, even the years of feeling stuck myself.

How I coach

I don’t give advice. Nobody could have advised me out of it, and I won’t pretend I can advise you out of yours. You’re the expert of your own life. My job is asking the questions that are hard to ask yourself, and staying in your corner while you find answers that come from you.

A lot of the people I work with are the ones everyone else leans on. Capable, dependable, rarely heard themselves. If that’s you, this is where you get to be the one who’s listened to.

The training

I trained through the Co-Active Training Institute (CTI), widely considered the gold standard of coach training, and became a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC). Since then I’ve been coaching people from all over the world, from different walks of life, most of them carrying some version of the same feeling: fine on the outside, a bit off or disconnected underneath.

Certified Professional Co-Active CoachTrained through the Co-Active Training Institute (CTI).

ICF Code of EthicsI follow the International Coaching Federation’s Code of Ethics: confidentiality, clear boundaries, the highest ethical bar.

Curiosity over judgmentWhatever you bring, I meet it with curiosity. Always.

Based in AmsterdamWorking online with people worldwide, in English.

If any of this sounds familiar, this is where it starts.

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