Today we’d like to introduce you to Adele Johnston.
Hi Adele, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My business began with my own experience of very early menopause at 35.
I started experiencing symptoms that I knew weren’t normal, but I struggled to get answers. A 2 year journey through the medical system involving countless appointments, tests, scans and referrals between 35-37 was the start of it all. At various points, I was even placed on cancer screening pathways as doctors searched for explanations for what was happening to my body.
Despite knowing something was wrong, it wasn’t until I was 37 that I finally received a diagnosis of very early menopause.
What struck me most wasn’t simply the delay in diagnosis, it was the lack of support available afterwards. As a woman trying to build a career ( I had a very senior corporate job at this point), run a part time business on the side, be a mum to my twin daughters and maintain my confidence and identity, I couldn’t find the kind of guidance I needed. Most of the information focused on symptoms, but very little addressed the reality of leading, working, performing, and living through this transition when it felt like everything was falling apart – including my marriage at that time.
So I became the menopause coach I had been searching for after trying to find one but Google displayed ‘No Results Found’ on the page when i typed Menopause Coach into the search bar.
What started as a personal mission quickly evolved into a professional one. As I began supporting other women, I realised my experience was far from unique. Thousands of women were being left confused, unsupported, and underprepared for one of the most significant transitions of their lives.
As demand for support grew, I also saw another problem emerging. Coaches, personal trainers, and health professionals wanted to help menopausal women, but many lacked the specialist education and confidence to do so effectively. They started reaching out to me with questions to help them understand menopause better for their clients. That inspired me to start training practitioners, combining menopause physiology, nervous system regulation, behaviour change, and practical coaching frameworks into evidence-based education.
Today, that work has grown into an international academy for women’s health and menopause education. We train coaches, personal trainers, and health professionals around the world to become menopause-informed specialists, helping them create meaningful impact while building sustainable businesses of their own.
Looking back, the experience that once left me feeling frustrated and unsupported became the foundation for everything I do today. My mission is simple: to ensure women receive the support, education, and expertise that I spent years searching for, and to equip the next generation of professionals to deliver it. My podcast The Menopause Coach is heard in 182 countries by over 300,000 listeners and growing.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Not at all and honestly, I wouldn’t expect it to be.
As a woman, a mum, a business owner, a leader, and someone building authority in an emerging field, overcoming obstacles is part of the job description. Challenges aren’t something that happen occasionally, they’re a daily occurrence. The difference is learning how to navigate them without allowing them to derail your vision.
Personally, one of the biggest challenges was my own journey into early menopause. I began experiencing symptoms at 35 but wasn’t diagnosed until I was 37. During those two years, I went through countless tests, scans, specialist appointments, and even cancer screening pathways before getting answers. It was physically and emotionally demanding, but it also exposed a huge gap in support and education, one that ultimately became the foundation of my business.
Building a business in the menopause space has also come with its own challenges. When I started, conversations around menopause were nowhere near as mainstream as they are today. There was still a great deal of stigma, misinformation, and dismissal. I often found myself challenging outdated narratives and advocating for women whose experiences were being overlooked.
Like many entrepreneurs, I’ve also navigated the realities of scaling a business while managing my own health, raising a family, leading a team, and maintaining the standards I expect of myself. There have been moments of uncertainty, setbacks, and difficult decisions, but every challenge has taught me something valuable about resilience, leadership, and the importance of building sustainable systems rather than relying on willpower alone.
If anything, those experiences have strengthened my conviction in the work I do. They have shown me firsthand that success isn’t built by avoiding obstacles; it’s built by learning how to adapt, evolve, and keep moving forward despite them.
Looking back, I wouldn’t describe the journey as smooth. I would describe it as meaningful. Every challenge I’ve faced has contributed to the business, the mission, and the leader I am today.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Adele Johnston Coaching Limited?
Adele Johnston Coaching Limited exists to change the conversation around women’s health, menopause, leadership, and business.
What started as my own search for answers after experiencing early menopause has grown into an international education and coaching company dedicated to helping women protect their health, confidence, influence, and earning potential during one of the most significant transitions of their lives.
Today, we work across three key areas.
Firstly, we support women directly through education, mentoring, and business development, helping them navigate perimenopause and menopause while continuing to lead, grow, and thrive in their careers and businesses.
Secondly, we educate health professionals, personal trainers, coaches, and practitioners who want to develop specialist expertise in women’s health and menopause. Through our flagship Menopause Support Coaching Certification (MSCC), we train professionals to confidently and ethically support women through midlife while building sustainable and profitable businesses of their own.
Thirdly, through The Menopause Academy, we are creating a global centre for women’s health and menopause education. Our mission is to raise standards, bridge the gap between science and practice, and ensure that more women have access to qualified, evidence-informed support wherever they are in the world.
Alongside this, I host The Menopause Coach Podcast, one of the leading menopause podcasts globally, where I have conversations that challenge outdated thinking, share expert insights, and empower women to make informed decisions about their health, careers, businesses, and futures.
What sets us apart is that we don’t view menopause as simply a health issue. We see it as a leadership, performance, and economic issue. While many conversations focus solely on symptom management, our work sits at the intersection of menopause physiology, nervous system regulation, psychology, leadership, and commercial sustainability.
We are known for pushing boundaries, questioning outdated narratives, and rewriting the rules around what is possible for women in midlife. We challenge the idea that menopause is a period of decline and instead position it as a powerful opportunity for recalibration, growth, and reinvention.
What I am most proud of is the ripple effect our work creates. Every woman we support impacts her family, workplace, community, and future generations. Every coach, personal trainer, and practitioner we certify goes on to support hundreds more women. The impact extends far beyond our programmes.
At its heart, Adele Johnston Coaching Limited is not simply a coaching business. It is a movement dedicated to improving women’s health outcomes, advancing menopause education, and ensuring women have the knowledge, support, and authority to lead their next chapter on their own terms.
We are not waiting for the rules to change.
We are rewriting them.
What matters most to you? Why?
What matters most to me is helping women reclaim ownership of their health, their decisions, and ultimately their future.
For too long, women have been conditioned to believe that someone else knows their body better than they do. We are taught to hand over responsibility to healthcare systems, professionals, and institutions and trust that they will have the answers. The reality is that many healthcare systems around the world were never designed with women’s health as a priority, and menopause remains one of the most underfunded, under researched and under educated areas of medicine.
That isn’t a criticism of individual healthcare professionals, it’s a recognition of a systemic issue.
The truth is that many women are placing their health, wellbeing and future quality of life into the hands of systems that often lack sufficient education, training and understanding of women’s health and menopause. As a result, women can spend years searching for answers, being dismissed, misdiagnosed, or told that what they are experiencing is simply something they have to tolerate.
I know this because I lived it myself, I was her.
What matters to me is changing that narrative.
I believe every woman deserves access to evidence-based education that allows her to understand her body, advocate for herself, ask better questions, make informed decisions and become an active participant in her own health rather than a passive recipient of care that was never truly designed for her in the first place.
Health is not just about symptoms, it influences confidence, relationships, careers, income, opportunities available to us throughout our lives.
I often talk about life currency because our health is one of the most valuable forms of currency we possess. It determines how we show up, how we lead, how we contribute, and how fully we get to experience the lives we are working so hard to build.
My mission is not to encourage women to reject healthcare systems. It’s to encourage women to stop outsourcing all authority to them.
The future I want to help create is one where women are educated, informed, empowered, and equipped to partner with healthcare professionals from a position of knowledge rather than dependence.
When women understand their bodies, they make different decisions.
When they make different decisions, they create different outcomes, and when enough women create different outcomes, we change the future of women’s health for generations to come.
That matters to me more than anything.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://adelejohnstoncoaching.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.menopausecoach/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adele.johnston.92
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adelejohnston/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAdeleJohnston
- Other: https://podfollow.com/the-menopause-coach
