Your life is not supposed to feel like this.
You are building your career, proving yourself at work, showing up for your family, investing in your relationships, and trying to figure out what you want your life to look like. The expectations are higher than they have ever been. The inputs keep multiplying. And too much of it feels out of your control.
You've got ambition. You've got ideas. You've probably even got the time. What's missing is clarity.
When everything feels urgent, nothing gets done. You move fast, stay busy, and still end the week with the nagging feeling that the things that really matter to you didn't get touched.
It looks like a willpower problem, but it's likely a priorities problem. And it's more common than you think.
“Remember this, if you can--there is nothing, nothing more precious than time. You probably feel you have a measureless supply of it, but you haven't. Wasted hours destroy your life just as surely at the beginning as at the end--only in the end it becomes more obvious.”
— Herman Wouk
Why the focus on time?
When I was a teenager, I read the above quote from Herman Wouk that has remained with me my whole life.
That is what drives me: impatience with delay, with deferring dreams while time flows past, with the gap between what you want to do and what you are doing. Not impatience with you.
This is focused, goal-driven coaching, not therapy, not endless reflection, with one purpose: to help you get where you want to go, faster than you would on your own. Patient when we are setting your goals. Relentless when we are pursuing them.
Is this for you?
You are ambitious, energetic, and capable. You have more ideas than you have time for, and more goals than you have clarity on. Some days that feels exciting. Some days it feels like drowning.
If you have ever ended a week wondering where it went, if you have ever felt like the important stuff keeps getting pushed aside by the urgent stuff, if you are curious whether there is a faster, more focused way to get where you want to go, you are in the right place.
You are an Impatient Client, looking for an Impatient Coach!
This is for people who are ready to stop circling and start moving. People who want a partner who is genuinely, relentlessly on their side and ready to say 'let's go.'
Think of it this way: all the typical coaching questions, plus a kick in the butt.
If that sounds like you, I'd love to talk.
Hi, I'm Karl Simmons.
I have spent my career at the intersection of leadership, consulting, and coaching, advising executives at companies like Nordstrom, Facebook, PayPal, Gap, and Autodesk, and teaching leadership at Northwestern University. I've worked with leaders and teams at every level of organizations, from the front line to the C-suite.
That background shapes how I coach. I know what it looks like when talented people get stuck. And I know how to get them moving again.
The approach
The Impatient Coach follows a four-phase process.
01
02
03
04
Understanding the problem and setting direction.
What are you really trying to accomplish? What is in and what is out of your control? What is getting in the way? Are you pointed at the right target before we start moving faster? This is where we get honest about where you are and where you want to go.
Creating space.
Before you can focus on what matters most, we have to understand where your time is going. Where you think it's going, and where it's really going, are rarely the same. This is often the most surprising part of the process.
Making progress you can see and measure.
Goals are clear, space has been created, and now we start moving. Tangible, observable, cumulative. One step at a time.
Handling obstacles.
They will come. Something will always get in your way; the real question is what we do when it does. We analyze, adapt, and keep moving.
What a session looks like
Forget about starting with 'So, what's coming up for you today?'
We start with your plan and look at what happened since we last spoke: what you really did, day by day. We pull up your calendar and your screen time and see where your time really went.
Then we dig into the actions you took. How did they go? How did you feel? How did the people around you react? What made it easy? What made it hard?
From there we figure out what it all means. What worked, what didn't, and what that tells us about the next step worth taking.
Every session ends with a specific commitment: a real next step, a real deadline.
This is where we figure out what's working, what's stuck, and what to do about it.
Origins of the Impatient Coach executive coaching for leaders
The name
As part of my International Coaching Federation certification process, I spent nearly a year practicing coaching with a group of colleagues. As we went, we reflected on our coaching presence. Those things that made each of us distinct, what we brought into the room that nobody else did.
When it came to me, people suggested words like 'urgent,' 'spicy,' maybe 'impatient.' Hearing them, everyone in the room smiled and nodded. Including me.
Urgent felt a little clinical. Spicy, well, maybe I'll save that for the cooking show I have in mind! But impatient? That felt exactly right. Impatient with wasted time. Impatient with the gap between where someone is and where they could be. Impatient with the habit of deferring the things that matter most. Never impatient with people.
The Impatient Coach was born in that moment.
The focus
Early in my coaching practice I worked with a client I'll call Jun. Smart, capable, and genuinely motivated. But he kept coming back to the same question: what would I do if he didn't meet his commitments?
I gave him all the right answers: that forcing him into action wasn't my job, that exploring the pattern was more useful than lecturing him about it, but that taking action was always his call.
Inside, I was frustrated with myself, not Jun. Those answers felt incomplete.
There had to be a halfway point between passive observer and drill sergeant. And slowly I realized what that halfway point was: someone who is genuinely, relentlessly on your side, standing next to you, guiding you through whatever is standing in your way.
That is the coach I decided to become. That is the Impatient Coach.
The path to urgency
I didn't start out as the Impatient Coach. I got there the long way.
Early in my career I worked in large organizations where the dominant mindset was departmental. Protect your turf. Scramble for budget. Follow the process. Wait for approval. At the end of the day, work was set aside and picked up again the next morning. Stable, predictable, and slow.
Then I moved into consulting, where everything ran on project deadlines. The mindset shifted. We adapted to the ebb and flow of milestones. A predictable pace most of the time, then an all-hands push when the deadline loomed. Better, but still reactive.
Then I found myself consulting inside the Silicon Valley ecosystem, working with startups and the teams around them. And everything changed. The energy was constant and directional. The daily work shifted, sometimes multiple times, as new information came in. Milestones were added, dropped, or checked off as understanding evolved. Nobody was waiting for permission. Nobody was watching the clock. Everyone was focused on where they were going and moving toward it without apology.
That is the mindset I bring to my coaching: the relentless, purposeful drive of someone who knows what they're building and refuses to waste a minute getting there. Not the inertia of an org chart. Not the predictable sprint to a deadline.
The background
My career has spanned global consulting firms, including Slalom and Accenture, where I advised executives at companies like Nordstrom, Facebook, PayPal, Gap, and Autodesk, and Northwestern University, where I taught and researched leadership, team dynamics, and organizational change. I've coached individual leaders, built and scaled teams and programs, and led large organizational interventions.
The through line across all of it is the same: closing the gap between where capable people are and where they want to be.
If any of this resonates with you, I would love to talk. No sales pitch. Just a conversation to see if we are a good fit.
The engagement
This is one-on-one coaching, built around your goals and your timeline. We work in 90-day sprints, long enough to make real progress, short enough to stay focused and maintain urgency.
At the start of each sprint we agree on what we are working toward. At the end we assess where we are. Some clients complete what they came to do in a single sprint. Others choose to continue with a new set of goals. Either way, you are never locked into an open-ended commitment.
That is intentional. This isn't about creating a coaching dependency. It's about accomplishing something meaningful, building the habits and clarity to sustain it, and then getting out of your way.
Get in touch
If this sounds like the kind of coaching you've been looking for, tell me a bit about you.
Proud to be an ICF Associate Certified Coach (ACC).
Committed to the highest standards of professional coaching and ongoing development.