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Foundation 4 Cohort Initial Post Discussion
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13 Replies
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My ideal client at the moment is the woman who feels like there is something more, they want to connect and understand their purpose, they have seemingly impossible goals and want support and accountability in achieving them, they want to expand their awareness and grow personally and professionally. They are 24-55 years, they are motivated individuals who are willing to get outside, explore and play. At the moment I will work with my clients remotely via zoom which removes barriers of accessibility. I think this wonderful for women who live in rural and remote Australia and allows me to work with people across international borders.
In the future I want to further develop my ideal client to encompass to encompass leadership development and in person workshops and retreats.
I want to incorporate nature in and out of the sessions. I would like to invite my clients to be seated outdoors when we do a session so we may play with what we can notice about nature in the immediate environment. In particular, what are the birds telling you, I really resonated with birds as messengers of the wilderness as described in the Coyote’s Guide to connecting with nature.
Outside of sessions I would like to invite clients to take wanders utilising the sacred questions, offering time at the beginning of the next session to debrief if the client requires.
Many people I admire online don’t integrate any nature connection to their practices, but what I admire of them is their online presence and information shared. I follow a few coaches who coach for the outdoor minded but again there messaging is not consistent with the integration of nature in their practice. For those who do, many books I have read, inspire me to deepen my own connection and understand how I can integrate this with transformational results for my clients.
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I have been struggling with a vision of who my ideal client is, and what makes them ideal for me. I want to primarily work with women, and hopefully women that are discovering their strength and working toward empowerment. Other women that want to see change in the world, want to be the change in the world, are the women that I want to work with. The world needs strength and togetherness right now, and hopefully I can lead groups on weekend guidance retreats. I am also interested in working with women that want to be more self-sufficient and live more naturally so I would be able to encourage foraging, plant identification, tinctures/teas and ways to provide for the Earth that provides for us. Ideally, the women I would work with would be between 22-45, eager to explore the wilderness and ready to get dirty. Open mindedness is also a requirement, as I don’t want either of us to waste our time. Women that feel they have something to offer but don’t have the key to unlock their potential are the clients I want to work with.
I want to offer all new clients a “wandering interview” to get us both on the same page. Existing clients can always request another wander or just ask for sessions to be out on the land. Clients that sign up for a package session will have the ability to do a weekend session and camp, fast, hike and feel the energy in the wilderness. With my friends that I have had sessions with I have asked how they want assistance in between sessions, so I text them a few days after the session and ask how they are and where are at with their goals.
I see a future of weekend and weeklong trips with groups of powerful, engaging and wild women. I would like to offer the trip as part of a package; 3-5 sessions before the trip followed by 3-5 sessions after would be nice, that way I could get a good grip on what needs and goals they have going out onto the land.
A different aspect of my guide work that I hope to market is vegan/plant based diet change. I prepare all of our food from scratch and live a (very close to) zero waste lifestyle, and the being PB and ZW go hand in hand. Meal preps in my client’s kitchen, trips to co-ops or farmers markets and recipe sharing will be the forefront of this portion of my business. In order for this to be successful for me I need to take more pictures of my food and my time at the farmer’s market to reach a bigger population. An age range for this portion of my work hasn’t been set yet, but I will hopefully have a better view of my ideal client soon.
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@sophieturner
Thanks for sharing your vision and ideal client! We have come a long way! I, too, would like to lead workshops, but the thought of having more than 5 or 6 seems scary to me. Building and encouraging my own connection to nature can certainly help me show my future clients the benefits of a deep and long lasting friendship with Earth.
Are you finding it hard to incorporate nature into your Zoom sessions?
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This module, talking about who our ideal clients are, starting our business, marketing ourselves, it really put into prospective for me that we are out in this world with knowledge that so very few have and we should be offering it to people. I hadn’t been taking it too seriously because of the lax due dates, and I fully regret that, because had I been more attentive and been on top of my assignments and business page and intake forms I may have clients by now.
The work that we are doing is intense, and I know that I have mentioned this before. I constantly have to remind my boss and those that ask that this isn’t some weekend check in when you can program; this program requires me to do my own side work, study things I want to learn, brush up on topics we have already addressed, expand my horizons and explore the unknown. Not only is their paper work to do, there is constant reading and learning, videos to watch and people to talk to/interview, places to go and ways to be and soul searching.
I don’t want to have to search myself and ask why I will only work with so and so or who or where or what. Asking these questions of myself though will get me further. EBI has done a great job of getting me to function in the unknown and be somewhat comfortable there.
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Initial post:
When I think about coaching/guiding others what comes to mind is me being in a healthy place of mind body and spirit to be able to show up for them. What has held me back in the past has been either physical illness or mental issues like anxiety. I’m working on being good to myself and taking care of balancing these dimensions of self so I can coach/guide. With that said other things that come to mind are working with women which has been my main audience for years. I have recently opened my practice to men’s circles where we explore soul and nature connection and it has been so sweet and fun and rewarding. I also have a deep desire to mentor girls age 10-14 and work with children like preschool or kindergarten age. All of these groups of people excite me and I have so many ideas of working with them I’d like to explore. Right now I’d say most of my curriculum and education is focused on women age 20-40.
I imagine working with women in the same way I have before but expanded upon with my nature-connected coaching skills. I bring yoga, meditation, expressive movement and dance, Sacred Feminine teachings, ritual and ceremony, feminine spirituality, fertility and sexuality empowerment and education, birth and postpartum doula care, Womb healing energy work, archetype exploration through the menstrual cycle and mentoring and more. I keep coming back to a school of women’s mysteries like priestesshood but I’m not sure 😉
One major reason I joined EBI NCC was to make my work more grounded in the context of nature than ever before. My offerings already had some components of nature connection especially around Moon cycle teachings and attunements but I felt starved for more of an earth nature connection.
Nature has always communicated with me and more so in the last decade of my life. I sought out indigenous medicine systems of knowledge to grow and heal and learn and that amplified my earth nature connection so much that the spirits came pouring through my dreams and other metaphorical and symbolic synchronistic ways. I could then guide from a surer place.
I wanted more so EBI felt like the right place to help me become a better tracker and cultivate deeper nature connection with community who also sought that.
So how might I work with my ideal client based on this and all the module teachings?
I see the goal being a mentoring of how to have a spiritually connected relationship to nature a magical one that the wise, the wild or the witchy, priestess women will want to work on. Why do they want this? Because they have felt they were this all their life. Because they are returning to a sense of belonging after a long exile of their sacred feminine and they can heal themselves their community and family. Because they want to make change through a spiritual activist life. Because they are creative women who want to claim their spiritual sovereignty. They are artists who are blocked and need inspiration to do their art again. Because they tap into the otherworld realms and bring messages and need to know it is safe to share that with the world. Becuase they were not given sex education and don’t know about their bodies and choices. I see these as some common categories or goals.
I would bring in eco-psychology for the one’s who feel the earth deeply. I would bring in sensory awareness meditation into yoga and movement. I would walk with them on the beach by the river in the park near their home and remind them the four directions the elements and nature is inside their human made home and their creatormade bodyhome. I will video chat with them I will create online courses eventually but I want to do live outdoor gatherings to weave it all together. Maybe retreat week long style in sacred places in the world. Maybe near sacred sites of the Divine Feminine…Maybe it would inlude going to wolf sanctuaries or national parks for hiking and camping. I like imagining tailoring this to a 13 year old girl or a 35 year old woman. This is part of the vision to support their awareness and success.
I just discovered earth speak collective which states that they invite all love the earth and nature and teach some nature oriented subject healing or holistic things to connect others. They host teachers of these kinds of subjects too and I may join their network soon. Since I just found out about this collective I don’t know too much about them but what I have learned that I could compare to EBI NCC is that both empasize SOUL DIRECTED living and leadership. -
@Sophie
You are a wonderfully present guide and your ideal client is seeking you too!I like how you mentioned they are motivated to explore and play. This is great in establishing approach.I relate to wanting ideal client to be leadership oriented. I want to do outdoor sessions mainly myself and yes the birds tell us so much!! I’m excited for you bringing nature integration as you mentioned into the world. Thanks for sharing I relate to a lot of what you mentioned about ideal client. -
@Ally
I love how you mentioned ideal client as eager to explore “wildernesss and get dirty”. You have a bright energetic presence about you and I’m sure your ideal clients will have fun with you on your retreats. I like how you imagine bringing in ways that you already have knowledge in like making herbal medicine. That’s another way to be nature-connected. I also mentioned “wild women” in my ideal client and think thats so cool we share that. Love the idea of the “wandering interview” and was curious how you’ll bridge your vegan life into your practice!! Exciting!
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Reflective Summary:
There are many great ideas in the Coyote’s guide in the core routines to incorporate as a lesson plan or curriculum for coaching practice. I see my cohorts and I are woman centered in our work and have other things in common in our ideal client. I think it is important to remember the process of ceremony throughout and to find ways to include it in retreats and outdoor sessions will help my ideal client stay focused on what goals they are working on. That will serve as the main feature of NCC. I enjoyed reading about my cohort’s ideas and visions for ideal client. I sense it stirred a little excitement in us all to imagine. As I become more skillful in the art of asking questions a universal theme will emerge and a pattern will reveal it self in my style and in my ideal clients. I sense this could expand into bigger longer term coaching and that is exciting to think about. What I feel I am taking away from this module is a greater clarity on my ideal client which then makes me think more about how I’m going to show up for that ideal client.
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Recently, I did an interview with a prospective client. She is struggling with blending a family, particularly the relationship between her and one of her stepdaughters. To get an idea of what her long-term goals are, I asked her to tell me what her goal was for this relationship over different time periods. Her responses varied, but they always started with “For that goal, she would behave _______,” or “She would treat me _________.” After she listed her goals, I reflected them back, asking her if she noticed any pattern. She rolled her eyes and said “Oh my God LeCompte. I can’t change what other people do.” Exactly.
My initial thought into my ideal client was that I wanted clients who I could help. In essence, my ideal client is the client who owns the emotions, beliefs, attitudes, struggles, challenges, and work that comes with doing this kind of work. There isn’t much any coach can do for one who refuses to be accountable to the totality of who they are. Ultimately, we have to be able to look under our personas and into all of our parts to make meaningful changes.
There are areas where I feel I have the most to offer, namely spiritual crises, emotional resilience, and relationship concerns. I hope to have strengths in grief and loss as we continue to learn coaching skills. These areas are the most familiar to me, spark the most passion because I have done an extensive amount of work of my own. In my personal work and growth, I’ve come to understand the challenges in a way that can hopefully offer compassion and empathy to those with similar journeys.
In feeling out how to do this work, I keep coming back to Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey can be seen in movies such as The Hobbit, The Lion King, What Dreams May Come, and The Matrix, in books, and even in the major arcana of the tarot. The idea is that we start with a call to adventure, completing our adventure wiser and changed. This cycle happens again and again in smaller iterations of our lives, as our life itself, and over the trajectory of many lifetimes – the soul’s trajectory. This is the lens through which I’m currently using towards my vision and how I want to work with others. In essence, where are they in this cycle, and how can I work as a guide to facilitate their egress to the next part of their journey.
I want my clients to work within nature and utilize connection with nature as connection with self. Moreover, my hope is to incorporate the Indicators of Awareness and Core Routines mentioned in The Coyote’s Guide. The cardinal and ordinal directions with the alignment to seasons and stages of life reminds me of the seasons of our own journeys, rituals, and celebrations. It makes me wonder how I can support each person’s journey and perhaps help clients have their own organic rituals as they go through their various seasons.
I have found some coaches online, but it is hard to tell how they integrate nature into their coaching practice. They speak to loving nature, gardening, some even incorporating other healing modalities such as reiki. Still, it’s hard to determine to what extent nature is involved. This also reminds me to be clear in my own site to help send a more clear message to potential clients.
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@sophieturner @allysonduffindalton @vanessatermini85
I noticed your main focus was around coaching women. I know you mentioned, Sul, that you were open to exploring men’s groups as well. Is the focus on women indicative about what all of you see lacking in the world, in terms of the support for women, or a preference? I’m curious because I’ve seen a lot of other powerful and insightful female coaches who only coach women. 🙂
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What a great question Jen, the pull to coaching women.
From the outset I was very hesitant to be specific on gender, I aspire to have male clients too, but in really niggling down to my ideal client for the now, and looking around at who I was attracting and thoroughly enjoying working with it was resoundingly women.
I would like to explore this space a little more in terms of what my initial entry mentions but I welcome men at any time and hope to be able to develop my ideal client to attract a client base of both men and women.
Ally, I love your wandering interview – it made me feel like I need to connect and wander with you again soon. I also love your idea of coaching pre and post a ‘quest’, this is something I too would love to develop and build on in the future.
Surprisingly, I find the zoom sessions to be rather simple and easy to incorporate nature, I try to be outside for them or the client is somewhere they feel comfortable. That said all my clients are keen to participate in an adventure q workshop, with a weekend of hiking and camping, I would like to facilitate a ‘rewildling’ next year.
Vanessa, I’m so intrigued by your offerings and would love to know how the mens circle goes. I found myself reading yours a little challenged, as I find some resistance to wanting to explore things on a more spiritual level yet completely intrigued at the same time. Identifying a space for me to further explore and learn in. Thank you 🙂
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The population that most excites me is the summer camp community, and my mind does not slow down or take a break when I think about working in that space. Some of my most powerful experiences as a camper and as a camp staff member were directly related to what I now think could have been threshold experiences. How much more powerful would they have been within the context of ceremony, invitations to partner with nature, and/or with set intentions?
I benefitted from executive coaching when I was the executive director of an overnight camp, and it was mostly conducted within the realms of the business side of the operation and the strategic planning process we had begun for the organization. To this day, I can name specific things we did together that helped me move forward, and I still apply some of what I learned with her to the work I do now. While I found the time with my executive coach to be valuable, there was no ceremony or nature connection incorporated into our sessions. With my combined experiences at camps as well as my time in the corporate world, partnering with summer camp administrators and Boards of Directors as a Nature-Connected Coach would be of value to them year-round.
I could also offer packages to camps where I work with their seasonal staff members and campers. How amazing would it be for staff members to feel confident and empowered to partner with their campers in their moments of wonder, fear, excitement, and boredom? To be able to help their campers and to be present with them, instead of feeling distracted by the often-hectic pull of the rest of camp going on around them, and/or feeling like they need to look to other staff specialists for ideas and assistance? How amazing would it be for staff and campers to go home at the end of the summer empowered to continue their journeys of connecting with nature on their own? They could find sit spots, set intentions, practice nature awareness, go on wanders, share what they learned with their families and friends at home, and, and, AND! My whole body is buzzing right now just typing this.
There are two types of organizations that immediately come to mind that connect with this kind of work- foundations like The Grinspoon Foundation, and associations like The American Camp Association (ACA) and the Association for Experiential Education (AEE). There are several resources on the ACA website that refer to coaching, but I could not find any indication that the ACA offers actual coaching services. Foundations sometimes offer coaching as part of their partnering with camps. My executive coaching experience that I mentioned earlier, for example, was packaged with the services The Grinspoon Foundation was providing to my overnight camp in support of our strategic plan and capital campaign initiatives. Again, that coaching was mostly focused on the business side of my role with the camp, and it definitely did not touch any connections with nature.
I also did several versions of a Google search on this, and I discovered that an ACA article with “coaching tips” was often at the top of the page, followed by pages of links about summer camp sports coaches and positions available. Upon further investigation, I found several articles that reference coaching on the ACA site. The ones I read offer helpful, useful information and activities, but they seem to be more about facilitation, mentoring, and overall engagement for groups and individuals.
When I added the word “executive” into the searches, the first website listed was for coaching services offered by an old acquaintance of mine from the camp world. It is an engaging website with a good mix of information, and I took some notes while navigating it. In looking at what he offers, compared to what I am considering for my coaching practice, his coaching is focused on the business, not the people. On the first page of the site, for example, it says, “…puts his experience to work GROWING YOUR organization. Any business working with children will benefit from working with…” (the caps are on his website, not my edit). It does have a great page that outlines how he structures his coaching packages and fees that I found helpful.
There is a long way to go in developing my brand and service offerings, but from what I can tell so far, there are not many others looking to do what I want to do. “The central idea in the Book of Nature presents learning through relationships: meaningful relationships and real connections.” (Coyote’s Guide, p. 283) Coyote Mentoring would be an invaluable service to camp administrators and seasonal staff who get swept up by the day-to-day of the business and the execution of the programs. This is farther off in my journey with EBI, but I also imagine working with summer camp populations in connection with the Transformational Wilderness Guiding certification I intend to pursue. I would also return to professionally advocating for the benefits of the summer camp experience for campers and staff members, and I would work with summer camp administrators on that issue as well.
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When talking about the phases of ceremony and closing with incorporation, I found myself dwelling on the contrasts and similarities between coaching and guiding. I look forward to exploring this as we continue through the rest of the course, and at the moment, I find myself gravitating more towards Guide than Coach. When we work with a client as they move the needle from one point to the next, create goals, do “homework”, and so on, those feel like coaching activities that happen within the larger context of guiding, where they develop, edit, and update a greater, overarching strategic plan and vision.
Pulling on that thread a bit further, running as a metaphor came to mind for me. My regular runs are my moving meditation, and I have experiences during many of them from which I can draw parallels to my nature awareness practice and my sit spot. When I start to train for a race, the mileage builds in three-week microcycles within the macrocycle of overall training plan. The running metaphor can be broken down even further to reflect the phases of ceremony. It feels to me like coaching is where the microcycles take place and continue to move us towards our goals, while guiding is where they come together in a macrocycle and evolve, grow, and continue to move us towards vision.