Chantelle Good strives to live life to the fullest and is grateful for every single day – the good and the bad.

Living in Te Awamutu with her partner and 8-year-old son, she enjoys renovating their home and has a huge passion for business and helping others. Chantelle is an inspiration to many not only as a successful businesswoman, but also for the way she’s taken life as a kidney dialysis patient in her stride.

Diagnosed in 2012 with kidney failure due to a genetic kidney disease called familial focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, she has been on dialysis ever since, which is a commitment of 20 hours per week. When problems arise, she also has trips and stays in hospital – which is a major reason why Chantelle built her business to continue to run without her and will continue to grow the business.

Chantelle has had many health and life challenges to work through, but no matter what she faces she’s determined to live a happy life. 

After working as a personal assistant for four years and in various administration positions prior to that, Chantelle began a new venture in April 2015 and started her own company ‘The Good PA’. Committed to providing small businesses with virtual administration and design services, they are also New Zealand’s only virtual assistant offering specialist administration support to financial advisers. The Good PA has developed a strong reputation for being the go-to organisation for support.

After launching ‘The Good PA’, Chantelle enlisted the help of coach and mentor Tracey Hancock.

Tracey has helped Chantelle both professionally and personally.

Business owners often have to make big or difficult decisions and Chantelle says it’s been great to talk through these with Tracey. Together, they come up with a range of options and solutions, so Chantelle can choose the best way forward.

“I couldn’t do it without her help because when you have a decision to make, you just have to talk to someone who is actually thinking about the best for your business,” Chantelle says.

One of those big decisions Chantelle had to make was about her pricing at the beginning of 2017. Tracey helped Chantelle move the boundaries she had in her head around pricing and value.

“If I didn’t make that change then, my business would have finished, and I wouldn’t have a business right now. So, Tracey helped me significantly.”

Personally, Tracey has helped Chantelle think more openly about life - what she wants from it, what kind of person she wants to be and how she wants to live her life. Tracey also reminded her to make time for herself.

“She really opened my eyes to things that, before I had met her, I would never have even thought about, such as materialism in the world and what actually matters in life.”

Chantelle says it made her re-think the value we put on possessions in our lives. She asks herself: ‘Why do we always need bigger and better?’, and explains that we can be happy with what we have now and not expect materialistic items to make us happier.

“The way I look at it is, we’ve renovated an old 1950s brick house and I once would have thought ‘in 10 years’ time, we’ll build our new dream house’, but now I think ‘but why?’ We’ve made the house our dream house anyway so why do we need to go and build a bigger house?” Chantelle says.

Living well to Chantelle means being happy. But what does being happy mean to her? She says it’s enjoying life, whether it’s a good day or bad day, and being grateful for what she has, such as her family and friends, as well as enjoying her business, but not letting her business rule her life.

Chantelle explains that although she believes work is important, it shouldn’t become the sole focus in our lives. It’s about learning to enjoy both work and life.

“If anyone is looking for a business coach, life coach or just help to get on track then I highly recommend going to see Tracey and having a chat with her. She is awesome, she’s just so helpful, insightful and has a good grasp on what’s important in life, so she is able to help other people with that as well.”