We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Debbi SLUYS a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Debbi , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
The industry standard is that leaders in the life coaching industry mentor coaches on how to coach and create offers for their prospects. Then, when the mentorship is complete, they upsell them into additional mentoring programs. At Dare to Declare, not only am I training trainers, but I am still personally offering vision board workshops myself, either hosting them independently or working as a contractor for a host at a corporate event or retreat. I have created a business-in-a-box model for my Academy clients so that they have all of the tools necessary to increase impact and revenue. This includes recorded instruction, workbooks, live weekly group mentorship, templates, pricing support, an exclusive Facebook group, and lifetime access to monthly live mastermind calls with me and their colleagues. They can purchase my vision board magazine wholesale to use with their clients. This matters because my Academy clients say the community is a supportive family, and this has become an extension of my purpose fulfilled as my legacy business.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a Canadian Christian mom of four adult children (set of identical twin daughters). I spent thirty years in licensed not-for-profit childcare as a director of a not-for-profit child care organization. Our childcare was a leader in our province as we piloted a new way of being with children that introduced play-based learning. I was asked to share our success story and recognized I enjoyed and had a talent for speaking and facilitating workshops. I led a team of 75 employees and spent some of my time coaching them, which I also enjoyed. I was always a visionary in organizing significant community events like the Blenheim Children’s Festival, which doubled the town’s population during the day’s activities. I also transformed large hall spaces to host themed dinners, which raised thousands of dollars for our church’s mission efforts in Guatemala, where I spent four weeks volunteering in a kindergarten at twenty years of age. I found vision boards as I felt an inner nudge that I was meant for something bigger. I came across the work of Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul), author of The Success Principles, who is the “godfather” of vision boards. I created my curriculum based on his work, my Christian faith, and the knowledge about brain development that I learned as an early childhood educator. My husband and I also constructed a boutique vision board studio on the second floor of his building supply warehouse. For two years, I honed my skills as a vision board facilitator, amazed at how many magazines I had accumulated in such a short period. I had equally as many in a storage unit I would take with me when I was hired to offer vision board experiences in other locations. I had a frightening episode one day at my childcare job. I lost my speech, and half of my face fell limp for a few minutes. It was a wake-up call that something needed to change. I gave my notice to my board of directors (six months’ notice); however, during that time, the world experienced a pandemic. I was so grateful for the personal work I had done with my vision board and my belief that this was where God was leading me. I stepped into two consecutive coaching programs, which had me leave my in-person vision board studio and step out on a global “stage.” Most of my colleagues had been coaching for some time but had not done workshops. I was the opposite and had a steep learning curve regarding how to offer coaching. During this time, other coaches reflected to me that no one was offering this vision board-proven process in my method. This gave me the courage to create a training program so other entrepreneurs could incorporate my proven process into their business with the Dare to Declare Academy. A year later, I also made my vision board magazine to offer luxury retreats abroad with the necessary supplies packed into my suitcase. The full circle moment was when Jack Canfield’s team used my magazine in 2023 in California for their Break Through to Success Training. The problems I solve for my clients are lead generation, program value, and structure. Vision boards are sexy! They turn heads, and with the multiple assets we have in the Academy, my clients have a mini vision board they can offer for free as a lead magnet, free webinar templates, and be a sought-after guest on podcasts and speakers with their specialization with vision boards. The vision board workshop can be positioned at the beginning of a coaching program, used with teens at a summer camp daily, a VIP day or at the completion of a program to lead into the next one to support goal setting.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
The lie was that I needed to prove my worthiness, and the lesson was that I did not need to partner with other industry experts to be successful.
The back story is that I was adopted at five months old. I was in a foster home, and the story my father told multiple times was that when I arrived, I was dirty, tired, and appeared to have a disability. As I did my uncovering work through coaching, I realized how powerful this story had been in shaping my belief about myself and, therefore, informing my behavior and results. When my grandson was born, and was such a bouncy, clean cherub in my mind’s eye, I put my infant self next to him and realized I held an image of a raggedy baby. Through mediation, I re-invented the story where my birth mother handed the infant to the adult version of me, and she was perfect and loveable.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Sept 2019, in the middle of the night, my daughter and I were in her hospital room after she had given birth to my first grandson. She whispered, “Mom, why don’t you quit your job?” I replied,” Because I am afraid I have a steady paycheck, and going full-time into entrepreneurship with vision boards feels scary!” Then, a month later, I spoke at a women’s conference and heard these questions, “What’s the price you’re paying for not following your dreams?” “What’s the price those around you are paying for you not following your dreams?” It was at that moment I decided to give my notice to my thirty-year career and step full-time into vision boards. COVID hit in the middle of cleaning out my offices, cleaning out files, and hiring my successor. I couldn’t use my in-person vision board studio. I was worried I had made a mistake stepping full-time into my business with no plan B and now no way to earn revenue (at least not how I had done it before.) I adopted the equation taught by Jack Canfield. E + R = O Event + Response = Outcome. If I allowed this event of the pandemic to create my outcome, I would have to go and ask for my job back! I decided to use my superpower, which is the R – my response (also my responsibility), and offered a trial mini vision board workshop online and called it my Power Word. It caught fire, and I enrolled 65 people and created 10 clients. I knew that the purpose and path God guided me to was clear and that I would succeed. Due to the closure of my studio, I discovered a global stage, and people worldwide were waiting for me to show up and offer them a proven process of transformation with my Dare to Declare vision board experience.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://debbisluys.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debbisluys/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/debbi.sluys/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbi-sluys-daretodeclare/
- Twitter: https://x.com/DebbiSluys
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@debbisluys1143?si=C6kJaO2b_-GOl-cf
Image Credits
Meg Gray Photography