Embark on a journey of transformation with guest Shannon Schottler, a transitions coach who masterfully guides us through life's unpredictable junctures. Together, we uncover the potency of coaching, as Shannon shares her wisdom on navigating the "messy middle" phases that often leave us feeling lost. Her insights provide a testament to the relatable, life-altering conversations you can anticipate during this episode. We also address the burning question: does the benefit of hiring a coach justify the investment? By the end of our chat, you'll have a comprehensive view of the profound impact coaching can have when you're at a pivotal crossroads.
We often hear about the importance of change, but how do we embrace it? This episode sheds light on the process of transition coaching and why it's critical to have goals that steer you toward clarity and confidence. Listen to how even seasoned professionals continuously tread the path of self-improvement. We peek behind the curtain to reveal what it takes to become a certified coach through the International Coaching Federation, and discuss how coaching can be universally accessed, thanks to the digital revolution post-pandemic.
Lastly, we delve into the often overlooked connection between our physical sensations and emotional wellbeing. Discover the groundbreaking effects of somatic coaching and how attuning to your body's signals can revolutionize your response to stress. Whether you're curious about the duration and cost of coaching or just seeking a guidepost for personal change, this episode promises to enlighten with practical knowledge and heartening stories from out time talking with Shannon.
For help finding a Coach of your own, here are the resources Shannon mentioned:
Shannon Schottler, Transitions Coach
https://shannonschottler.com/
International Coach Federation Coach Finder - https://coachingfederation.org/find-a-coach
Hudson Institute Coach Directory - https://hudsoninstitute.com/coach-directory/
Make sure to subscribe to our channel, comment, like, and share!
Amy, Kitty & Stacey
P.S. Isn't our intro music great?! Yah, we think so too. Thank you, Ivy States for "I Got That Wow".
Embark on a journey of transformation with guest Shannon Schottler, a transitions coach who masterfully guides us through life's unpredictable junctures. Together, we uncover the potency of coaching, as Shannon shares her wisdom on navigating the "messy middle" phases that often leave us feeling lost. Her insights provide a testament to the relatable, life-altering conversations you can anticipate during this episode. We also address the burning question: does the benefit of hiring a coach justify the investment? By the end of our chat, you'll have a comprehensive view of the profound impact coaching can have when you're at a pivotal crossroads.
We often hear about the importance of change, but how do we embrace it? This episode sheds light on the process of transition coaching and why it's critical to have goals that steer you toward clarity and confidence. Listen to how even seasoned professionals continuously tread the path of self-improvement. We peek behind the curtain to reveal what it takes to become a certified coach through the International Coaching Federation, and discuss how coaching can be universally accessed, thanks to the digital revolution post-pandemic.
Lastly, we delve into the often overlooked connection between our physical sensations and emotional wellbeing. Discover the groundbreaking effects of somatic coaching and how attuning to your body's signals can revolutionize your response to stress. Whether you're curious about the duration and cost of coaching or just seeking a guidepost for personal change, this episode promises to enlighten with practical knowledge and heartening stories from out time talking with Shannon.
For help finding a Coach of your own, here are the resources Shannon mentioned:
Shannon Schottler, Transitions Coach
https://shannonschottler.com/
International Coach Federation Coach Finder - https://coachingfederation.org/find-a-coach
Hudson Institute Coach Directory - https://hudsoninstitute.com/coach-directory/
Make sure to subscribe to our channel, comment, like, and share!
Amy, Kitty & Stacey
P.S. Isn't our intro music great?! Yah, we think so too. Thank you, Ivy States for "I Got That Wow".
Here I go, here I go, coming. I can never stop. I'm a tour de force running. Give me to the top, I don't need an invitation hello everyone, hello are you guys?
Speaker 5:good, good. I almost started bumping myself in and out, so much that I was perhaps off.
Speaker 4:Well, I should tell you that I was trying to bring you in and then you were doing it at the same time, so we were canceling each other out.
Speaker 5:Basically, there we go this is not anything new. I mean, we've only been doing this. How many times? Yeah, yeah, yes. So welcome everyone to three cocktails in, where we're going to have a fantastically addicting conversation among three friends and we're adding a fourth today who have been there, done that and still want more. I'm super, super excited. So I want to introduce somebody to all of you. So now I met this wonderful person like two years ago, about 10 days into my surgery. Remember when I said I had that surgery and I was so doped up that I remember really enjoying the day with her, but I don't remember really anything that we talked about, so we get to quiz her all again. So, guys, we're going to talk to Shannon Schottler, who is a transitions coach. We bring Shannon in. Hi you guys.
Speaker 6:I'm so excited. I feel like I'm just like in this conversation with girlfriends.
Speaker 5:It's delightful right yes, that is what this is. That is all this is so, shannon, I did tell you that that I was heavily doped up that day. When we met, and I met Shannon at my former teams, it was like a team building a goal setting. It was Shannon. How would you describe it?
Speaker 6:yeah, I think it's on team building, goal setting. Time, with a little bit of mindset work mixed in, was how I remember the instructions from your fearless leader at the time.
Speaker 5:Yes, yes, I thought it was so interesting. I do remember thinking it was really interesting. I know I came home with a book and I have been following you on social media ever since, well, you're sweetheart and I can't believe it's been two years.
Speaker 6:When you said that, I was like, oh my gosh, time flies. Yeah, I mean I believe you, but it's just been. It's been a minute.
Speaker 5:I think it was decent. Maybe it's not quite two years, december of twenty two, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I love this topic. Two things. First of all, coaches. We've talked about this before. I'm kitty was talking about it, you know, in a business sense, and I remember also going huh, I wonder what a coach really does and if we should invest in one, because people who use coaches swear by them. And then I have been super drawn to your social media, your stories, your quizzes, because you focus on transitions or the messy. I've been in a big old messy middle for quite some time.
Speaker 6:I remember the first time I met you, amy, I was like Amy, will you come on my podcast?
Speaker 5:you've been through it, you've been through it and I'm still working through it. I actually had a consultation with Shannon yesterday and I didn't know she was going to talk about that.
Speaker 4:Oh sure, I don't care yeah, amy's pretty much an open book here on the podcast, and it's one of the reasons why we wanted to do the podcast, because we just felt like you know what, let's just put it out there, because there are so many other people who are going through the same things and we always want these conversations to help someone else, just like we. We appreciate all of the wealth of knowledge that that comes to us every day. We want to share that, and so we're. Yeah, I, stacy and I are thrilled as well to meet you and to dig into this. I've just always had so many questions about it. I've always looked at an executive coach or a life coach or whatever as being one of those things that I would say, yeah, that would be really nice to have. I don't know, like you know, how would I ever justify that? So let's get into it today yes, please, I'm yeah, and what?
Speaker 3:what do you consider yourself? Are you a life coach or a business coach? What? What do you say you are?
Speaker 6:Stacy, let's freaking talk about it. Okay. So I have been coaching for seven years and when I first became a coach, I thought I'm going to call myself an executive coach. You know I'm going to be one of those big fancy people, but the reality is that's not my passion, that's not my jam. Ironically enough, I coach quite a few leaders. You know of teams and whatnot but my passion is really transitions coaching.
Speaker 6:So I wondered, if I call myself a transitions coach, will people get what that is? Will they know? Because people seem to know what a life coach is and people seem to know, like, what an executive coach is, or a leadership coach, or a business coach, and and I'm pleased to say that I think most people understand what I do after I've talked about it on social media for so long. So I really call myself a transitions coach and I would say that I exist in that sweet space between. So I'm less about subject matter in the sense of like we're only going to coach on your leadership today, or, oh, we're only going to coach on your life today, and I'm much more passionate about catching people when they're in a certain space, which is the space that Amy talked about.
Speaker 6:So when they're in those messy mucky middle seasons. I describe it as times when people know that something is ending in their life, but maybe they're not sure what the new beginning is going to look like just yet. It could also be like they know behaviors are wanting to end in their life, a way of relating is wanting to end in their life, or a career path is wanting to end in their life. Sometimes they're voluntary and sometimes they're involuntary. It's it's a divorce, it's a layoff, it's a whatever that's impacting a person to say, yeah, that messy mucky middle that you talk about, I'm there right now.
Speaker 5:I think that for a lot of the people that might be listening, it doesn't have to be or where I see value in this is it doesn't have to be career or a major life event. Many of us have kids that are leaving. Yes, you know, this empty nest is something new or Stacy, and I have kids that have gotten married. There's a grandchild on the way, our parents have passed away. There's this shift that just happens gradually with life. That's new and uncharted, and what do you do with it? That's you know. I was thrilled to learn that you do work with people on non-business things.
Speaker 6:Oh yeah, completely, because my passion is also focusing on behaviors, you know, like. What are the? What are the core behaviors that a person is wanting to change? Because those behaviors are probably showing up in more than just one area of their life. So I'm thinking about a woman I was coaching once who was leading a team, but she came into session crying in tears one day because it's something that had happened with her kids. Well, turns out, we can find the parallel to how that is also showing up in the workplace. Right, and so so I will have companies sometimes that will pay for the client's engagement if it is more of like okay, they're wanting to work on leadership, transition and whatnot. But I am always very clear in those contracts I get to coach this person on whatever they want to bring into coaching. I don't just isolate them to say the only thing we can talk about is what happened from nine to five.
Speaker 4:Because it's exactly, exactly. And work is life and life is work and all of the things, everything makes a person whole. So that's, do you ever have the company have a hard time with that, ever pushed back and say no?
Speaker 6:No.
Speaker 4:I have it.
Speaker 6:I have it and I'm pretty explicit about that, and I have yet to have somebody say, oh no, like we can't do that, I even have to be explicit about there is a chance that my coaching could result in this person leaving the organization.
Speaker 5:Which brings me to the interview we did with Sarah, who was being groomed for a very to take her boss's position and as a company benefit, they gave her and another person coaching and she ended up writing her exit strategy in the coaching.
Speaker 6:Yeah, yeah, it happens and so it's important. Of course, I've learned that after seven years of doing this work. I didn't set up my projects that way in the beginning, but now I've grown wiser and I know that if I'm in a B to C business to consider excuse me a business to business relationship where the third party is paying, yeah, yeah, I'm going to be very clear about all of the potential outcomes.
Speaker 5:So can you just talk to us a little bit about how a coach might be different than a therapist? Yes, because you're talking about work, body holistic approach. Yes, and I mean I don't.
Speaker 6:Let's talk about it. That's the reason why I do initial consults with clients, because I want to make sure that they're ready for coaching and they're not in a place where they're still maybe in a therapeutic space. Ps, I work with the coach and the therapist. You know, like it's not to say you can only be in one domain, but what I might talk with my coach versus my therapist with could look different. So the way that I articulate it to folks is to say that is to talk about the timeframe that we're discussing.
Speaker 6:So a therapist is very much focused on meeting you in the present but looking back into the past to potentially resolve past traumas that are preventing you from moving forward. Myself, as a coach, I'm focused on meeting you in your present, articulating what is that future desired state that you're wanting to get to and how are we working on behaviors to shape you support, like supporting you and getting to that place that you're wanting to go. So it's nuanced right, like theoretically you could be talking to us about the same topic, but one is about healing whatever past hurt needs to be healed to support you and moving forward, and one is more focused on building new behaviors or growing existing behaviors to support you and getting to where you want to go. Does that distinction make sense?
Speaker 5:Yes, which also prompts my next question. So have you ever been working with somebody and had to say, honey, I think you need to go to therapy before we can get back to coaching. Yeah, totally, I want to hear that.
Speaker 6:I mean, amy, I'll be totally straight forward, I don't think it's high with you. I would say that every coach is different. It is so important as a coach to understand your own capacity and what you have space to hold. So, again, I've been doing a bit around the block a little while now. I am also going through some advanced certification that is primarily reserved for therapists. It's a three year program focused on somatics and embodiment.
Speaker 6:So I feel comfortable traversing some of the gray area that exists between coaching and therapy. That may be some other coaches who identify more strictly as executive coaching. They may not be comfortable swimming in the gray water versus the clear black and white of where therapy ends and coaching begins. But yeah, I've done that before. The key marker for me is can this person articulate the future that they're trying to get to? If someone is so hung up on past hurt, past pain, that they're really struggling to be able to even articulate like this is the place I'm trying to get to, then it's really a pause button to say let's pause, let's give you some time to resolve, work through that past trauma, that past hurt, so that you can move forward.
Speaker 4:What does? How specific does that vision of the future need to be?
Speaker 6:Yeah, what a great question. So by the very nature of my work in transition, it's pretty great to begin with, but I like to have folks articulate it.
Speaker 6:This is a little bit unique to me as a commitment statement, so it might sound like something like I'm a commitment to and I've had clients honestly the one that I hear a lot that gives me chills the most often is some version of I'm, a commitment to living at the center of my own life, because oftentimes that comes up for women who I'm coaching in midlife who have really frankly devoted their entire personhood to their kids, to their family, to maybe even their job. There's a lot of folks I coach who are 40 and single and wish they weren't anymore, and so it's a commitment to saying, okay, my job's no longer going to be at center, my kids are no longer going to be center, I'm going to be center in this metaphorical solar system that is my life. So is that specific in one way? Yes, but is it still pretty vague and broad in terms of how that's going to come to life? Yeah, so it's a both and that is the.
Speaker 4:You have to start there, though, don't you Exactly? I mean, it's just like you know when you compare it to addiction. So we'll just say comparing it to addiction, you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. So there has to be a commitment on their part to say I'm going to do this. I'm going to be committed to this.
Speaker 6:Yes, a willingness to change. Willingness is a word and a question that I'll come back to, even within myself, on the shit that I'm working on. I'm working on stuff all the time too, you know. Am I willing? Am I willing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was surprised to hear you give that as the answer, because I assumed you maybe had to come to the table with your you know goals or ideas of what you want to do in the future, how you want to. You know what you want to get to and you know that's where I get lost, because I have I don't know past. You know this job and this current you know place that I am what I want in the future. That would be the problem.
Speaker 6:Well, and for me that's. That's like session number one, frankly. Yeah.
Speaker 6:You know, exception number one, two, three, maybe even all six, depending on what kind of timeframe we're looking at. Again, that could be different depending on the type of coach that you're working with. A business coach may say no, no, no, you got to tell me how much do you want to grow your revenue by? Like before we even get started transition coaching. By its very nature, sometimes the goal is Honestly two words that I hear a lot in transition coaching is clarity and confidence. I want clarity for where I'm headed and I want to be able to step into it confidently.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I just want to take a real quick pause here and note that everyone, even the most confident people, need help like this from time to time. So you, shannon, you're sitting there, you are the expert that we've brought onto our program today to talk about this. We could all look at you and say she's got her shit together, but you say I've got my own shit that I'm working on every day. So thank you for admitting that, and I hope that our viewers and listeners hear that loud and clear. Know that when you are navigating your life and you come across people who look like they have got it all together and the world is their oyster, they may not agree more.
Speaker 6:I could not agree more, and that plagues people in coaching sometimes, or that plagues people in getting started sometimes in coaching as a coach, because they think like, oh, I can't do it until I have all my shit together and honestly, that's part of my passion for transition coaching too is to say there's no arrival place, we are never. One of my favorite mentors says to me Shannon, you're never arrived, always arriving right, like we're always arriving and so we're continuing to be doing the work. I just sat with him today and he was working beyond some work right now, you know. So it's just like we're all in it all the time. There is no place to arrive at, there is no final destination. Life is not up and to the right. It's a cyclical pattern of moving through seasons where it feels like we've got our shit together and where it feels like we don't yeah.
Speaker 5:So I have a, I have probably two, but let's start with the idea of you said you've been doing this seven years. We've talked about how there are different types of coaches. Executive life, what is like. How does one become a coach? I feel like on social media we hear a lot of people who I'm just going to say it claim to be coaches and I look at them and I'm like I don't think you can just decide all of a sudden.
Speaker 6:Yes, amy, this is correct, this is a true story. And also coaching is a highly unregulated field right now. So if we can acknowledge that there are many people who can say I'm a coach, for whatever reason, I I'm just going to get up on my cell box now. What is ethically on my conscience is to say for me to say that I'm a coach, that means I have taken a training program, so that's a nine month certification.
Speaker 6:I am registered with the International Coaching Federation, so that's the like ACC, pcc, mcc behind a person's name. Pcc means you've logged a hundred hours of coaching. Pcc means you've logged 500 hours of coaching and sat for an exam. Mcc means you've logged 2,500 hours of coaching, so I'm a PCC status right now, working to MCC someday. And it means that you're engaging in continuing education, maybe similar to some of the fields that you are all in, so logging so many hours of continuing education credits each year. For me, that's ethics and coaching. That's that's what I wish, and I wish everybody else who was doing it without those things called themselves something else other than a coach.
Speaker 6:So it was less confusing for the people who are looking right now. It also means you're prescribed to like a code of ethics similar to realtors, I imagine.
Speaker 5:So if somebody did want to look, you know, not everybody lives in a metropolitan area, not everybody knows a Shannon when would somebody start if you were? Just they're listening to this and they're like, damn, that, that's me, when do they go?
Speaker 6:Yeah, you can go to ICF's website. You can search by your state If you want to find somebody local to your state. The reality these days, especially in post pandemic life, is they don't have to be in your state. I'm a huge fan of coaches that come out of the Hudson Institute by nature, because that's where I was trained and I think they're very skilled at whole person coaching. So you could go to the Hudson Institute's website and search for a coach in your area or search by specialty. And if you find one and it's not clear to you if they've done the things that I've talked about, ask, ask in your consult Are you certified with ICF? Are you ACC or PCC? Have you done, have you logged your nine months of your certification program? Don't hesitate to ask, yeah.
Speaker 4:Is your training? I would assume that you do both training in person as well as virtually.
Speaker 6:You mean when I was training for?
Speaker 4:coaching. You're coaching when you're actually working with a client.
Speaker 6:Yeah, so I am. I used to be able to say I'm 100% virtual at this point because the vast majority of my clients are not from Minneapolis, St Paul anymore. I'm coaching people in Canada and Sweden and throughout the US. I used to have an office but with the pandemic I got rid of the office because it just didn't make sense anymore. There is one woman that I am coaching in person right now and I love it, and that's more of the semantics, the embodiment work that is really important for us to do, in my opinion, like nervous system to nervous system, flash to flash, not over a screen.
Speaker 5:So that was my second question. I want to hear more yeah. I never thought about this until internet days of pandemic doom scrolling. Whatever it is, the word somatic is everywhere right now Somatic yoga. How can I lose 47 pounds doing somatic yoga? I'm like I don't think you can. It could be wrong if it was maybe four to seven pounds. It talked to me. What does that mean?
Speaker 6:What the hell does it mean? Honestly, I've been through my first year of training with somatic experiencing, and I'm still wrestling with the definition of how popular this is getting. Something that smacked me between the eyes the other day, though, was think about the phrase like keeping, like, keep that in mind, you know, like, keep it in mind. To me, somatic is about helping people keep or know things in body, so what do I mean by that? I'm thinking about? I'll use myself as an example, like work that I've done with a therapist or a coach, where it's like yeah, I know in my mind what I should be doing.
Speaker 5:You asked me yesterday, how would that feel. How would that feel?
Speaker 6:Yes, yes, but until we can like actually translate it. Until I started working with somatic trained coaches and therapists in my own personal work, I was like, oh shit, I did not know what it feels like in my body, both on the discomfort edge. I'm thinking of a client I was working with this morning who has this habit of I'm okay to talk about it, she's case study for me if you're not but who has this habit of bracing against things. You know, like she's just like protection, walls up, like oof, forget it, not going there. So it's both like feeling that in your body for the first time. She's known this as a. She's 61 years old. She's known for decades that this is a pattern for her. But until I invite her to say okay, now grip, brace your fists, brace your butt, brace your like every bit of your body, feel how much energy that takes, how much energy it's taking you to fight against, to brace against the world. Now can we play with what the opposite sensation is in your body. And two, oh you guys, I could talk about somatics and embodiment all night.
Speaker 6:The reason why I got so hot on it is because there was clients that I was coaching and until they got everything they wanted right. It was like, oh yeah, like check, check, check the boxes, but they couldn't. They weren't feeling it on the inside. They weren't feeling the way that they thought they would feel when they arrived at all those destinations that they wanted. And that was when I was like shoot.
Speaker 6:I've got to do more work to understand how we help people be in their bodies more, so that their bodies, their nervous systems, can actually begin to feel the way that they want to feel and feel safe in that, not threatened by it. Because sometimes ease is terrifying for people. If they grew up in an environment that was anything but that, and sometimes it's the opposite stretch things that make us fearful or anxious. That's terrifying and it makes people never want to reach or stretch. So it's helping to build a person's capacity to be with those literal sensations in your body. One of my favorite coaches once said to me if you're willing to feel any feeling, you can do anything. And so that's it for me. Like how do we help people be able to be willing to feel, literally feel in their bodies any feeling so that they can do the things that they want to do?
Speaker 4:So we're all probably sitting here thinking am I feeling what I'm feeling? I mean, I'm having a little bit of a hard time wrapping my brain around what you just said.
Speaker 5:Well, I'll volunteer something that I said to Shana when she asked me yesterday. I made the comment about if something's easy, it doesn't feel real. I think there's something wrong, I'm missing something. Something's not right if it feels easy. It's like I need that anxiety inside to accept that what's going on is actually going on, and I just have lived with this pit of anxiety that I thought it was a matter of fixing a whole bunch. But it is a physical feeling. I got a crappy phone call that I had to return today and I put it off and put it off and put it off because I could steal my whole body. You know, just icky, yeah.
Speaker 6:And that's a great example. That's real right there. Right, and Amy, if I can just honor you and your humaneness, hey girl, me too, like that was me, you know, up until I did some somatic work of I was constantly hyper-vigilant, like scanning, scanning Where's the threat, where's the danger, and that was what made me feel alive was to go into the fire. I needed that and it takes work to begin to unwind that in our nervous systems, to say, oh, actually, if life's like calm, that's when I feel most at ease, instead of needing life to be frenetic or constantly a challenge. You guys, I was training for Iron man after Iron man.
Speaker 5:I read that. I read that on your page. I'm like, oh my God, you got that up with that.
Speaker 6:To like keep myself, you know, in that frenetic energy, because that was the only energetic wavelength that I felt safe in was constant achievement, busyness going. Yeah, that takes some time to unwind and it's so meaningful. It's so meaningful to be able to just sit and do a puzzle with my daughter now and not have to be going to run pound out 12 miles on a treadmill to feel like life was okay.
Speaker 4:So the work that you do with people to help them with this is to get them comfortable with the opposite of the feeling that they're having. Is that right? Is that what you said?
Speaker 6:Yes, and we work with it. There's this concept in SMAC called titration. You're trying to work your way into it, you know, just like throw them in the deep end and say, okay, now swim in easy land, right. Or vice versa. If it's the opposite for them, we're trying to like gently titrate in so it's like, oh, can we sit with? Can you describe for me what does ease feel like in your body? When's the last time you felt ease? Is there any imagery that comes up for you? How does your body want to move when you're in an easy, relaxed state? Okay, and can we hold and be with that sensation for 30 seconds and then 45 seconds, then a minute, on and on and on? You know, can we grow the amount of comfort that you have being an ease?
Speaker 5:I'm hoping yeah.
Speaker 6:It's like what's coming up for you, ladies, as I say that. Shoot.
Speaker 5:Oh, so who, who can, who can benefit from a coach? What? What are the simple things that and I shouldn't say simple, because if it's a problem it's nothing simple you know, in our own little, in our own world, do you have to have a major life? Is it just somebody to talk to, Is it? Yeah, your friends don't get it. Your, your family doesn't understand. You don't want to talk about it with other people. Who, who comes to you?
Speaker 6:All of the above. I think there are people who come to me who want to stop like, let, leaning on their friends or their partner or whoever, because they're continuously talking about this thing that they're wanting to change. So sometimes it's people wanting to give others a break. Sometimes it's people who are wanting that unbiased perspective, you know, of saying like I don't want to talk to my friends or my boss or whoever about this. I'm trying to find an objective third party that can help me weed through this a little bit. I would say the biggest thing that's critical is the piece that I talked to earlier. So making sure that it's we're not we're balancing the work of I'm a little bit of a naughty coach like dip in the gray area right between coaching and therapy. But do we are, we, do we have a future, even if it's like a little bit gray hazy? Do we have an initial idea of something that we're trying to work towards, so that when we're coming into coaching relationship, we have that as an anchor point and we'll know when we've arrived, right, well, no, well, we're like. But Kim, my Buddhist buddy, would say Shan, we're never arrived, always arriving. But yeah, I would say people who have an initial sense of what they're wanting to work on. I think coaching is great for external processors I'm a totally an external processor like a place to really talk things out, because what's the work of a coach?
Speaker 6:A work of a coach is to help you get some clarity on the goals that you're after, to be a mirror for you, which sometimes can be hard, but it's useful. There are, there's shit that's on me that I can't see and I need somebody else to say oh, like, look that that sticker is on your jacket. Do you see it there? Do you see that, that hole that you keep walking in? Do you see that there? To help us see the patterns that we might not be able to see because we're too close to them, and I say that with so much compassion, having patterns pointed out to me too. Bye, bye, coach.
Speaker 5:What does doing the work look like? What is this work, I mean in my mind? Is it a workbook? Is it a? Is it a, you know? Is there a chapter I should read, with a quiz at the end?
Speaker 6:Yeah, I, yes, this is such a great question. So, and the work very much parallels with, also, how we measure success in coaching. So there's an acronym that I'll use with clients DEAR D is doing, e is experimenting, a is awareness, r is reflection. But I'm going to trip you up, I'm going to start backwards. So the work is first, reflection. Are we committed to being able to look back on our choices, on our patterns, on the things that we're trying to change with the intention of, like, noticing patterns in ourselves? The A is moving into awareness. I'll use an example here.
Speaker 6:I always use an example of my meditation practice. Right, like, let's say that I come in with a goal and I'm like I want to become a good meditator, I want to meditate for 20 minutes a day. Okay, well, I'm not doing that. Okay, well, we're going to start with reflection. Can we look back at the times when you chose not to meditate? Yeah, I can look back at the times I chose not to meditate. Can we become aware of what you chose instead, in those moments? That's stepping into the A right, can we be aware of the thoughts that are running through your head in that moment of choice when you choose to not sit down in the chair and you choose to go do something else instead.
Speaker 6:The E is experimenting. Are we willing to try? That's doing the work, are we willing to play? So experimenting with meditating might be like okay, I'm just going to try to meditate for five minutes three days this week and I'm going to notice what happens and moving through those steps until we can get to the D, the doing of like. Okay, I've arrived, I'm doing my meditation for 20 minutes every single day. We're going to slip up, right, we're going to have moments. But then it's meeting ourselves where we are to say, oh shoot, I'm not even at experimentation anymore. I'm back at the starting block of reflection, of looking back in hindsight to identify the times where I could have done the thing that I'm wanting to do differently and I didn't. So that acronym helps a lot, and that's the same way that we measure outcomes and coaching. What is the client learning about themselves? How are those learnings resulting in meaningful behavior change and is are those behavior changes building into the tangible impacts in this client's life?
Speaker 4:I would expect that there would be pretty big differences between men and women over the course of the work that you do together.
Speaker 6:Oh, that's interesting. Like what are you thinking?
Speaker 4:Well, so something that I don't remember how it came up recently, but somebody noted that, and this may be a generalization, but I've noticed it here in my household, so you know how you go to bed at night. It is uncanny how we'll say Bill. Okay, so my husband is Bill.
Speaker 4:He can't when he's ready to go to bed. He's ready to go to bed. He lays down, he closes his eyes and within a minute he is. I can tell by his breathing pattern he's asleep. We don't do that, as far as I can tell. Women don't do that. Women lay down and all of a sudden, now you're going to go through a whole thought process about every single thing that you did in the day, everything you have to do tomorrow, everything that didn't go right. You know, yada, yada, yada. So I think there are just these things that are major differences between men and women and that has got to come up over the course of coaching with a man different from a woman.
Speaker 6:It's interesting you say that full disclosure. I coach primarily women, but I do coach I say, a few good men and I would say my. I've had similar assumptions and my assumptions have really been challenged this year, especially the past two years. I've coached some freaking incredible men whose capacity to go inward and do some of that our work, the reflection work, is really powerful. So I don't know I hope that everybody's capable of it it might manifest differently, like I might have a woman come into session who's done a lot of the our work outside of session, whereas maybe and even this I noticed my body constricting, like I don't know if I think this is true A man might want to sit down and do some of that our reflection work in session, but I don't really care if it's happening in or out of session, just like, are we capable of engaging in it at all?
Speaker 6:And that's part of the coach's responsibility is meeting clients where they are. Not everybody wants to go in and do the layers and layers of identity work here. That's okay. We can still meet people where they are and and what, what work they are ready to do.
Speaker 3:What layer of the onion.
Speaker 6:Are they willing to peel back?
Speaker 3:That just sounded to me like the. You know, like us, where we would over plan. We need to plan and get all ready for the session with you. I would just show up and whatever Can't record.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah. So talk, talk about how long. I mean just general sweeping generalizations. I. I know kind of how you're structured a little bit. What does the average coaching journey look like for people?
Speaker 6:Yeah, I would say the average. Most people choose to engage a coach for Gosh, amy, I noticed my hesitation even into this, but I'd say six months, like that's pretty typical. Six months Seems to be a good length of engagement. I have some clients that want to keep me in their back pocket all the time. You know, because the nature of transition I Mean, amy, I'm gonna be like put a bookmark in this because you've already done a lot of your transition work candidly but the nature of major life transitions where we're changing our careers, we're getting a divorce, all of that thing, it can take five to seven years.
Speaker 6:So that's like a big myth buster for me. There are people who think like, oh, I'm just gonna be we and bam, thank you, ma'am like in and out. There are clients that are in and out there, clients that I only spend six sessions with, but they're less and I say this without judgment. They're less interested in the depth work. They're just trying to get a new job. As an example, you know, I would call them mini transitions. They're trying to just like make one little tweak here and there. But the more I called identity level work, where we're really trying to shift, like, oh, I'm a person who dot dot dot for, really a person who Wants things to be, thinks things need to be hard to feel good, you know, it's gonna take a little bit longer, turns out, you know, especially if you've been doing it that way for For 50 exactly.
Speaker 5:I think six months should wrap it up.
Speaker 6:Well, and again, like we take it at the client's pace, there are clients who dip in and dip out. They're like, okay, it's like okay, I need time to integrate. I'm doing that right now in the semantics program I'm going through. I did it for a year and then I thought, oh, I need time to integrate this and not just keep going in the learning, like can I just take this in a little bit?
Speaker 5:So another question and this isn't specific to you, so don't feel as if you have to share, specific this way yeah, the general population. What does a coach cost?
Speaker 6:Oh my gosh, amy. I wish I knew. Oh it is. It is such a wild range out there. There are people who are probably like just like out there getting started and maybe doing like sessions for a hundred bucks an hour. Executive coaching engagements can cost fifty thousand dollars for a six-month engagement. I just got a quote from a coach today. For some business coaching that was between three thousand and eight thousand dollars. You know, I I pride myself on being affordable and I feel like that helps me attract the kind of people that I want to work with. Whether it's affordability or whether it's practicality, they share similar values as me, by the way.
Speaker 5:I got the information and I felt very comfortable with that. I felt like that seems to be, you know.
Speaker 6:Like on par, you know and for me, I guess I'm benchmarking a little bit to like therapists and want to say I don't need to charge an arm and a leg, but I want to make a living, you know, sure, sure. But, coach peers would tell you I'm not, that's fine, that's see, that's the work I would go do with my coach ladies yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, well, I'm just thinking. You know people who've never considered it, but they're listening now and they're thinking this would be really good for me, but I can't afford it before they've even ever made the phone call, right? You know, just to give somebody a general idea of you know, but If you really want to make a life change we're talking a life change here, even a career change, if you're just looking to get the new job.
Speaker 5:and I say just You're looking to get a new job because it's super important to your life, isn't that worth? Yeah, the work and the pay.
Speaker 6:Yeah, it's different for every person and I am very big on transparency, because I know how I feel when I try to hire something like the coach that I was considering today, when I try to hire someone for their services and they don't publish their pricing on the website. So Go, look at my website. I'd say you just write on my website I'm 200 a session. This is what I charge, and I also say on my website if there are Amy P P Amy probably knows, or, since this is this about me, I have a bleeding heart, you know. I want to help people. I'm, I'm here in this to be of service. You guys are gonna make me cry like that's just so deeply on my heart and I'm so very clear that this is my calling.
Speaker 6:And so there are people who are special ed teachers in Atlanta, you know, or Social workers in Boston, who can't afford 200 a session, and I offer sliding scale to them, and that's also on my website. There's a woman that I've coached who works for a major tech company that will go unnamed. Her friend is a social worker. She knows that they pay two very different rates for coaching. She does not give a shit because we share similar values. Well, and you have to look at it as what is?
Speaker 4:the cost of staying in the same place. Bingo Kitty, you know, I think I'm gonna be a little bit more honest about this.
Speaker 6:Kitty, you should be a coach. That's one of the questions that we ask someone when they're in the, when they're in the doldrums, when they're struggling to let go. Yeah, what's the cost of staying where you are? I?
Speaker 4:one of the things that I wrote down is the is the concept of always arriving and, as as we start to get toward the end of the conversation, shannon, we could talk with you for hours. This is wonderful, and maybe we even have you come back and to talk about you know love it eagles, but, um, always arriving.
Speaker 4:When, you know, we were having these conversations Stacey and Amy and I were having these countless conversations that led up to Starting the podcast. We kept pondering this question of as we are now in our mid fifties and we still want more, what is it? Are we starting over or is it a new beginning? We kept getting hung up on the language around that because, you know, for Amy, she was making really big changes. I wasn't, stacey wasn't, but there were still things in our lives that we wanted to, you know, make sure, moved forward, etc. And so I love that. Always arriving Are always. We are still evolving. We will be until the day that we take our last breath.
Speaker 6:Yes.
Speaker 4:So I I wrote that down and I am going to keep that front and center, um, as I Go through my life every day, because I've still got things that I want to do. I'm not facing a divorce, I'm not facing a job change, but that's going to apply For me every day, absolutely.
Speaker 6:Absolutely. You know, it makes me think of my mom. My dad passed away this past year. My mom is 84 years old. I just gave her the book life is in the transitions, as at an, as an 84 year old woman.
Speaker 6:Yeah you know, and she is always arriving. Never arrived right now, no matter how much we want to think that we're anywhere else, even at 84. She's still learning, growing, evolving. This is her first time living alone ever, you know. So it transition, change is constant. It can be the, the small quote-unquote I hesitate to even use that word because it is major, no matter which kind it is or it can be the more major. Everything's changing at once. It all still counts and we're always still going through them. Transitions are actually More a larger portion of our life than the quote, like arrival destinations at this point. That's what the studies show us. So we need to be highly skilled at navigating them because they're constant.
Speaker 5:Yeah Well, this has been fabulous. It's been so good to talk to you. I think we'll put some of your links In the comments and in the body of how people can find you. I would strongly suggest everybody starts with instagram, because you do a great job with stories and quizzes and little daily check-ins and even if you're not in this space, they're great questions and it's always fun to see what other people are thinking.
Speaker 6:Totally agree. That's my boy.
Speaker 5:You're about that too. You know what's everybody else you know I can't be the only one, so I love those. So, yes, so we will, uh, we will include ways to reach out to you.
Speaker 6:Great, I love you ladies so much, your hoot. I love being a hoot.
Speaker 3:Oh you have any podcast advice for us? Oh yes, say you're on a podcast.
Speaker 6:Keep doing what you're doing because you're fun, you're interesting, you know, and I love how you make it Personal, you know, like you invite people to get into the real stuff. Yeah, don't just regurgitate. You wouldn't do this, but this is the tendency that I have to work against. Don't just regurgitate the model, the framework, whatever. Can we actually Be vulnerable and share, like how that's showing up in our everyday life? Yeah, so keep doing that. We will do that all right ladies, yes, until next time.
Speaker 5:Can we all join in and say yes? You guys, bye, bye. Friends, turn it up loud.