Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Carmell Clark. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Carmell, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
I didn’t set out to “have a mission.” I found it deep inside me when the life I’d spent two decades building suddenly dissolved beneath my feet. In the wreckage—no home, no income, no clear next step—I discovered an unshakable question pulsing inside me: What if raising our own self-awareness is the lever that lifts everything else?
That question became a daily experiment. I rebuilt my coaching practice from a single rented room into a location-independent company serving clients on five continents. Each conversation confirmed the same truth: when people see themselves clearly—without the fog of inherited expectations—they make braver choices, treat others with greater humanity, and create work that benefits more than their bank accounts.
So my mission crystallized: to expand and elevate consciousness, beginning within ourselves, and to link that awakened self to purposeful action in the world. It matters to me because I lived the alternative—knowing for years the bigger work and life that was already inside of me, pushing me to pursue it, yet ignoring and making excuses time and again. The moment I listened, everything that looked like loss became the raw material for a global body of work: women’s leadership programs that propel mid-level managers to the C-suite, international retreats that give women a firsthand taste of freedom, and curricula that turn inward reflection into outward influence.
When I watch a client reclaim authorship of her own story, I’m reminded why this mission is non-negotiable: a single awakened human changes every room she enters, and a movement of self-awareness changes the world.
Carmell, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Picture a New Year’s Eve, kitchen-table summit, two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc, and my dear friend Marin staring me down: “I don’t f***** care. Decide what you’re going to do and DO IT.”* The words sliced through every perfectly reasonable excuse I had for staying with my comfortable wellness center instead of stepping off the edge and pursuing the bigger global life I’d ached for. Marin’s kick in my *ss started the next steps and a few years later, the business was sold, I was taking myself and my work global. A small backpack with my laptop shoved inside, I headed out into the globe with no itinerary, figuring it out as I went. Meeting online with clients from Paris cafes, leading coaching groups sitting on wet cobblestones in a storm in the Cinque Terre, Italy so I could have wifi, leading trainings from an open-air co-working space in Bali 18 hours different from the U.S…. Coaching leaders teams while living out of a carry-on showed me two irrefutable truths: radical self-awareness is the master key to change, and women transform fastest when deep inner work is paired with real-world adventure.
Since then I’ve built the Center for Transformational Influence, where my work now lives in a few main lanes: executive and transformational coaching for founders and C-suite leaders; the evidence-based Core Self Discovery® curriculum; PowerCircle™ masterminds and corporate trainings that advance high-performing women to boardroom; and Adventurous Self retreats—seven-to-ten-day expeditions in Italy, Bali, India, and beyond that give professional women a visceral experience of freedom so electric they can’t shrink back into old boxes when they return home.
Most clients arrive looking stellar on paper yet restless inside—founders bumping an invisible ceiling, executives confronting inner blocks or self-doubt, and whole teams wrestling with confidence and collaboration. Together we strip away inherited “shoulds,” translate fresh insight into strategy, and embed conscious-leadership practices that lift both people and profits.
What sets my approach apart is the deliberate blend of metrics and magic. Yes, we measure promotion rates, retention, and revenue, but we also protect the alchemy that appears when someone finally feels at home in her own skin. Philosophy, neuroscience, somatics, and adventure all share the same table with business and strategy in my programs, because change that doesn’t land in the body rarely survives quarter-end.
Proudest moments? Watching a Portugal-retreat alum stride back into her boardroom and renegotiate from unshakable self-trust, and, on a personal note, proving that a life of depth and impact requires never shrinking to fit any box.
Bottom line: if you suspect your next level isn’t about adding more hustle but accessing more trust, pull up a chair—there’s room at the table.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
I am incredibly fortunate to have a profession where my clients nearly always continue on as friendships into the future. This speaks to my strategy for growing my clientele–truth, trust, authentic investment in their greatest successes, and… vulnerability.
I realized as I began developing my unique coaching methodology that my own openness and honesty, where I could share my own experiences in precise ways at key times, gave my clients insights on their own paths forward. This supported their developing their trust in themselves even more than their trust in me–the crucial point in highly successful coaching. From this, the resulting relationship that begins as a professional one is able to continue forward through the years in a friendship form with times of coaching and mentorship if it’s needed.
I have carefully selected partners as part of my effective growth strategy, as well. Partnering with other successful entrepreneurs, leaders and executive directors and C-suite players, I have been able to bring my work to numerous industries at multiple levels, as well as expand from local to regional to national, to international. My business reaches far across the globe.
Word of mouth is cited as the most effective BD strategy for most businesses like mine. However, I see this as people caring enough about those they refer as well as the depth of relationship and trust I share with my clients to cause them to direct someone into my path. I am not for everyone, and so these generous and principles-intended referrals are more meaningful to me and to my business growth. Of course, my results speak loudest. While I am proud of the immense success my clients, both individual and business/corporate, I am most inspired by their courage, action and growth to create those successes.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
Absolutely—and they sit on very different shelves, which is why they still cross-pollinate my thinking every day.
First, Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Santiago’s quest for his Personal Legend mirrored my own leap from a safe wellness practice to a backpack-office global life. Coelho reminds me that the treasure is never separate from the journey; the moment you commit, “everything in the universe conspires” to move you forward–even those things that look like failures or blockades on your path. When a client hesitates at the brink of a big decision, I pull that thread: “Your Personal Legend is calling—will you answer?”
Tao Te Ching – Lao Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation) a simple beautiful way to move beyond black and white thinking into a more meta-conscious perspective about business, problems, people and life. The essence of it teaches us to let go of resistance to embrace curiosity and understanding. Understanding is a wavelength we can access as individuals and as leaders. When we do, solutions open up, vision is created, honest relationships are formed, and we are motivated to our best actions.
Oprah Winfrey’s Interview at Stanford Business School, June 2008. Among her numerous powerful insights in this interview, Oprah extemporaneously spoke the clear words of her purpose on the planet. I stopped the video right then the first time I watched this interview. “This” was what I myself had been seeking to arrive at–the clear, precise expression of my purpose and my work on the planet. In the months that followed, I re-watched many times and carried a tattered envelope with iterations of my own purpose scribbled on it, everywhere I went. I was determined to connect squarely with my own–and I did! It has given rocket fuel to every act and decision since. Oprah models how a crystal-clear mission scales across media, philanthropy, and commerce without losing its soul. Whenever I design a new program, I ask, “Would this still fulfill the mission if the cameras were off and the profits vanished?”
Leadership and Self-Deception, the Arbinger Institute. This book most fully expresses the essence of how I work with clients–and why! It teaches that forcing someone or using what we know to try and convince or motivate someone will eventually fail. Instead, we must do the harder work of understanding someone else, of building relationships of trust where we ourselves are deeply trustworthy, and learning in the first place how to manage our own egos and the manipulative and coercive motives our egos try to employ to get what we want. It teaches that true leadership must start by being trustworthy, then building trust in order to teach others to lead themselves. Ultimately, importance and impact is most about the results in others that we can achieve over the profits and outcomes we tie ourselves to.
The Art of Possibility, Rosamund and Benjamin Zander. This book profoundly shaped how I transformed myself from “knowing it all” to becoming intensely curious as a person and as a methodology. In my coaching and my leadership, it has continued to not only instruct me with its principles over the years, but has brought me ‘inside’ the experience of being this kind of a teacher, leader and person. Woven through it is the repeated lesson of not taking myself too seriously–both a referendum on our status as we gain greater success and recognition, and on cultivating strong healthy creativity by always remaining a “beginner” at heart. In life and in leadership, these concepts are invaluable.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://carmellclark.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carmellsadventures/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carmell.clark
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmellclark/
- Twitter: https://x.com/CarmellClark
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqZC8V771ha37EilZxDQfVA
Image Credits
Carmell Clark