For nearly two decades, Coach M has trained bankers, brokers, executives and UN teams on the one skill most of them were never taught: understanding how people really decide.
Most professionals believe they lose deals, promotions and negotiations because of price, timing or competition. Mirella J. Frenn, known across the region as Coach M, has spent almost 20 years proving otherwise.
“People don’t buy your offer. They buy their own reading of you,” she says. “By the time you start your pitch, the client has already judged whether you’re credible, whether you’re safe, and whether you understand them. Most salespeople are answering questions the client stopped asking ten minutes ago.”
That idea sits at the core of everything she teaches. An ICF-accredited executive coach, NLP practitioner and CBT-certified sales performance coach, Mirella works at the point where business results meet human behavior: how people judge, trust and buy.
From the newsroom to the training room
Her path did not start in coaching. Mirella holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas, and began her career in Lebanon as a communications account manager at Polaris Public Relations. Years of shaping messages for clients taught her something she still uses daily.
“PR teaches you that perception arrives before facts,” she says. “Whoever controls the first impression controls the conversation. I took that lesson out of communications and into sales, leadership and coaching.”
She began training professionals in 2006 and moved to Dubai in 2015. Her career has since crossed corporate, real estate, retail, hospitality and healthcare, including a role as Director of Marketing at an aesthetic hospital in Dubai Healthcare City, a background that later led her to complete a second Master’s with a specialization in Medical Tourism.
Thousands trained across all seven Emirates
Over nearly two decades, Mirella has trained thousands of professionals across the UAE and the wider Gulf, in sectors ranging from banking and beauty to media, NGOs and academia.
Her engagements include training all branch managers of Dubai Islamic Bank across the seven Emirates, programs for MADI International’s staff and clients across the GCC, and work with the International Labour Organization.
What connects audiences this different, she argues, is that the psychology does not change.
“A branch manager, a broker and a CEO all face the same moment: someone across the table deciding whether to trust them. The industry changes. The human being doesn’t.”
Building an academy from scratch
Today, Mirella is Head of Learning and Development at Prestige One Developments in Dubai, where she built the company’s academy function from the ground up. She designs and delivers training for the internal sales and business development teams, and runs broker sessions that regularly bring together up to 200 channel partners at a time.
Her approach rejects the idea of training as a one-off event. The program she leads is built on a cycle of training, testing, evaluating, mentoring and monitoring, with role play and in-session assessment replacing passive lectures.
“A great session that changes nothing on Monday morning is entertainment, not training,” she says. “If I can’t measure what changed in the way a team speaks to a client, I haven’t done my job.”
Real estate as a proving ground
Dubai’s property market has given her method its toughest test. Off-plan buyers commit large sums to properties that do not exist yet, often from abroad, often after one conversation. Trust is the product before the property is.
Her sessions teach brokers to read a buyer before showing a single unit, to handle objections with structure rather than pressure, and to anchor every pitch in market data. She has developed a series of proprietary frameworks for closing, follow-up and developer due diligence, each designed so a broker can apply it in the next meeting.
“Clients in Dubai are sophisticated. They’ve heard every script,” she says. “What they haven’t met often enough is a broker who listens better than he talks and can back every claim with numbers.”
On stage: the psychology of influence
Alongside her corporate role, Mirella is building her profile as a keynote speaker in Dubai and the Middle East. Her signature theme is the psychology of influence: the hidden psychology of how people judge, trust and buy.
The talk is designed for executives, entrepreneurs, sales teams, leadership forums, universities and women’s networks; any audience whose results depend on persuading other people.
“Influence isn’t a talent you’re born with,” she says. “It’s a set of patterns. Once people see the patterns, they stop guessing and start choosing how they show up.”
The Beauty and the Sharks
Mirella’s next chapter is personal. She has completed the manuscript of her memoir, The Beauty and the Sharks, which confronts the professional stereotyping of women and the hidden cost many pay simply for how they look or present themselves at work.
The book draws on her own experience across industries in Lebanon and the Gulf, and she plans to extend it into a regional campaign, events and speaking.
“Every woman I know has paid a tax she never agreed to,” she says. “Underestimated in one room, over-scrutinized in the next. I wrote this book so we stop paying it in silence.”
What drives her
Asked what ties together banking, real estate, healthcare and a memoir about women in business, Mirella’s answer is immediate.
“People. Every result in business is a human decision first. If you understand how that decision is made, you can lead better, sell better and live with more clarity. That’s all I’ve ever been teaching.”
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