Elliot
Elliot Awin
Kind · Calm · Intrepid · Grounding
Elliot Awin provides performance coaching from Cobham, Surrey, having founded Not a Noun in 2025. He is accredited with the Association for Coaching, working with senior leaders, founders, and teams operating under sustained pressure to help them find clarity in motivation, identity, and purpose.
The business years
Elliot graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2010 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and Management. He immediately started working in the wine trade, and after a year joined the business his father started. After five years, Elliot took on the role of Managing Partner, combining four decades of the company's trading experience with a fresh, adaptive approach, building a team capable of responding to the fast-changing market conditions. Over his career in wine he has founded and acquired businesses, led market expansions, and held full P&L responsibility. He currently still consults and sources for a successful innovative wine brand that brings convenience and accessibility to wine consumers.
The turning point
In November 2014, Elliot was diagnosed with various heart arrhythmias, bringing a 27-year rugby career to an end, and in February 2020 he had a pacemaker fitted. Rather than retreat, he founded Wave Wrangler, a charity supporting people living with similar diseases. Believing in no limits, in December 2023 he rowed solo and unsupported across the Atlantic Ocean; 3,000 miles from La Gomera to Antigua, 44 days and 1 hour alone at sea — raising over £150,000 for the British Heart Foundation and shining a spotlight on heart health. He was the first person with a pacemaker to attempt the race. In 2024 he was named the British Heart Foundation's Heart Hero of the Year.
Coming to coaching
These experiences led Elliot to coaching. He has a foundation in psychotherapy, holds a Certificate in Humanistic Counselling from The Gestalt Centre, and completed the Advanced Executive Coaching programme at the Møller Institute, Churchill College, Cambridge. He is accredited as an Executive Coach by the Association for Coaching. His coaching combines lived experience, business acumen, academic study, and the Gestalt philosophy of lived experience.
The approach
Elliot's methodology sits at the intersection of performance, identity, motivation, and purpose. He draws on frameworks like the Gestalt Cycle of Experience, the Paradoxical Theory of Change, Total Motivation, Ikigai, and Resilient Performance — not as theories to memorise, but as maps for noticing experience. His style is human, direct, and quietly challenging; he creates a calm, grounding space from which to explore, evaluate, and evolve. Progress, in his view, is measured not by how good someone feels in the session, but by how they move through life afterwards.
Work with Elliot
Get in touch for a no-obligation conversation about what you're working on, and whether coaching is the right fit.