We were lucky to catch up with Danielle DeBay recently and have shared our conversation below.

Danielle , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.

Client success stories are my favorite. There are two types that I find most significant. The first is when a client becomes aware of an inner fear they didn’t realize they had in the first place, which allows us to work on it. The other is when a client embodies their worth through their actions, which takes time and practice. One of my clients in particular was struggling with feelings of not being enough when it comes to relationships. She had been out of a relationship for a couple years, but was still feeling residual feelings of not being good enough for someone new.
She would often question herself and whether or not she was doing something right. She lost part of her self trust, especially around discerning a partner who is right for her. She was often made to feel like she was too much and in doing so, she started to hide a lot of who she is.
That was the hardest thing to witness, her making herself smaller so that someone else could feel better about themselves.
She started to come back to who she truly is, focused on her authentic self, and embraced her strengths as a person, these same strengths somebody else found to be too much. She really started to embody her worth when she set specific boundaries and stuck to them, when she opened up about what she needed and wanted, and when she was willing to share the super vulnerable things about how she was feeling.
She’s now in a relationship where she is loved, appreciated and seen for all that she has to offer. And she has been able to translate that worth from her romantic relationship into the other relationships in her life.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’d love to! I got into the coaching industry after working in a corporate setting and loving the part where I got to help the employees I managed work on their personal growth. It took me a few years after that job to come to this conclusion, but since then I have loved it.

As I continue to learn and grow and have new life experiences, so does that nature of the work that I do. At it’s core, the coaching, or guiding as I like to say, is centered around coming back to your inherent worth. There’s a lot of digging into what is known as ‘the shadow’ meaning the parts of you that are subconsciously hidden away out of fear of not being enough.

I work with clients around subconscious fears, bringing the hidden parts into the light, and using their energy in a way that benefits them more. The problems I’m usually helping people solve are what’s holding someone back from moving forward, why they have these roadblocks in the first place, and what actions will work for them specifically, to move forward.

One of the things I’m most proud of is being part of someone’s growth. I often make the analogy that I’m like a navigator in the car, I help guide you to where you want to go, but ultimately you’re the one driving the car and getting yourself there. I love being along for that ride and even more so when they get to their destination.

Because I view this work as deep and intimate my services are all one on one session based. There are few different areas that have specific timelines we try to work within, but otherwise we go at the pace that feels necessary for each person.

One of the things I noticed that sets me apart from other coaches is that I never think I know your life better than you do. I have insights, wisdom, and suggestions, but they are never and should never be taken as gospel. I work with the value of trial and error in mind, meaning we try something and if that doesn’t work, we try something different. It’s not because the client isn’t trying hard enough, it’s often because we haven’t found the right fit for them. So instead of trying to fit them into a specific mold, we make a mold that works for them.

The other main thing I would like people to know about the work I do as a guide, is that we get enough feedback from the systems that are in place that we’re not enough, or doing enough, or are wrong for the things we like and do, that they will never receive that from me. It is deep within me to never make someone feel that way, so whether it’s in working together or in life in general, I always want to feel like a safe space for people to show up and be themselves fully.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

There’s only one tried and true effective strategy and that is word of mouth.

Besides me early clients, the rest of them have truly been through referrals from clients I’ve worked with. There’s nothing better than someone else telling another person about how much they like the work you do with them.

One of the ways I use it as a strategy is to follow up with clients after our first session together with a personalized email so they can share any immediate shifts they’ve had and it can be used as a testimonial.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

There have been times when I didn’t get things right. There are still times that I don’t.

About a year or so after starting coaching, I decided to follow the path that most coaches do. I created a group program, I did a lot work to get the content together, to figure out the best way this was going to work for people, and chose the best way for us to communicate as a group.

I was so excited. I decided to launch it right before going on a trip. My focus before the trip was for this program and really getting it ready.

I launched it and there were crickets. I didn’t have anybody interested. I didn’t start the program because nobody signed up. And then I started to question myself.

We all have setbacks, but we also have expectations, and when those aren’t met, I really questioned if I was the right person to be doing this work. I came close to stopping because it felt like I shouldn’t be doing this if I was putting in all this work to not have anyone sign up.

I look back now and can see why it didn’t work out. I’m really grateful for that experience now, I wasn’t at the time though, because it showed me not only that I am resilient and to keep going, but how to do so in a much more aligned way. A way that works for me.

It was also a way for me to realize that I prefer and do best with one on one clients. It provided me with more information about what works best for me.

So even when you work really hard on something but you don’t get the results you wanted, it doesn’t mean you should give up or even double down. To me, it means take the feedback and pivot in a way that is in more alignment with what works best for you.

Contact Info:

• Website: Danielle DeBay.com
• Instagram: @danielledebay
• Other: Shadow Work Journal: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/63c1b0a863294c8a66ec083d

Image Credits
Jennifer Coffey