We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ellie Etzell. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ellie below.

Ellie, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start big picture – what are some of biggest trends you are seeing in your industry?

As someone who thrives with having eggs in several baskets, I have an interesting perspective on this prompt. I had a moment where I was like, “Is there any chord or trend that runs through energy work, women’s coaching, street style dance & singing?” – as those are the realms that I work in. I quickly realized that the unification of these varied zones that I work have actually begun to merge, and that this is the biggest trend that I’m seeing in my industry of healing & coaching: the arising trend of embodiment.

For decades, the personal development & coaching industry was topped out by men – powerful, impactful men, for sure (think the likes of Jack Canfield). These men taught principles around goal setting & achievement, clear communication, and setting your old stories aside to claim ones more powerful and fulfilling. Shifting your mindset. As I said, all excellent tools.

What went underutilized for decades in the coaching industry (and really, for centuries in the lives of most people in the West), is embodiment practice. And thankfully, there are people devoted to the momentum of this movement, allowing the trend to explode, seeping through viral trends on tiktok and Instagram and making it’s way into corporate wellness retreats.

This momentous trend of embodiment in the coaching & healing industry essentially states this: that the habits you’re looking to grow from, the beliefs that hold you back, the emotions that have been cycling and stuck for months, years, decades: they’re in your tissues. Held in your body, as Bessel Van Der Kolk described brilliantly in the New York Times Bestseller, The Body Keeps the Score.

The trend of embodiment, then, has involved coaches, guides, mentors & healers to start incorporating new tools – ones that involve movement. Dancing. Sounding. Humming. Singing.

Tools that shake, vibrate & move the tissues of the clients body, so as to literally and effectively move the energy held in the tissues; to shake out the anxiety instead of just talk about it. To sing the grief through instead of trying to forget about it. To quake and groan with rage instead of trying to affirm “I am calm, I am calm, I am calm…”.

The arising trend of embodiment has begun to unlock an ancient, more feminine side to personal development and evolution: one that isn’t interested in using just the mind, but rather the entire body, to create change.

It’s a great privilege and honor to be of service in the embodiment-centric realms that I work in: coaching, healing, dance & singing. Watching clients sigh in relief as tears finally start running after years of holding them back, hearing them explain how they can literally breathe better after a session of rocking & shaking, watching them describe how their posture has a changed after one session of sounding – it’s one of my greatest pleasure.

What an honor to be given this opportunity to be of service.

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 lasted just 6 months working in my degree-field of Accounting before exiting the corporate scene and stepping into where my most unique gifts could flourish: healing and coaching. My mother had owned a Yoga training school along with a holistic coaching certification program for over 20 years at that point, and with my Grandmother as a practitioner of healing arts, I was well poised to enter this field.

My signature style in coaching & mentorship is working with women to up-level their vitality and embodiment through development of intuitive eating, organic confidence & feminine movement. I also have unique capabilities as an energy worker and healer, offering in-person and virtual sessions of hypnotic healing that fuses several styles of energy work. My unique gifts as a healer also play in to my work as a coach, effectively healing the inner world & coaching the outer world so that undeniable life shifts can be experienced by my clients. I work with clients 1:1, in live group programs, and also offer pre-recorded courses.

I get hyped on working with creative, inspired women who are ready to feel more alive in their life. They often want to access more vitality, address old trauma, start living in sync with their monthly cycle, develop their intuitive gifts, or make a career shift. I help make these transitions feel smooth & sexy.

I’m most proud of the confidence and courage that it takes to walk away from a salaried job to start a personal brand and business at 23 – yes young Ellie, get it ;)

What people who are interested in working with me *must* know is that I am not a practicing therapist; I work with people who are overall healthy, but who are ready to leap into undeniable transformation and up-leveling of their lives.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I believe most entrepreneurs have a somewhat shared experience of overcoming the social resistance toward creating your own business. I remember calling my mom (who’d been an entrepreneur for over 25 years) to tell her that I’d begun the process of quitting my corporate job. She was in Ireland at the time, so it was in the middle of the night for her, and she was like, “What?! You have student debt Ellie! How are you gonna pay that off?!”.

I didn’t bend to her nerves, told her I trusted my choice, and that was the end of the call (although she did call me back soon after and had remembered that yes, she too is an entrepreneur).

I remember my excitement after making a large loan payment 2 years post-grad and calling her like, “I’m over 85% paid off Mom!”. I think those milestones feel so much more impactful as an entrepreneur, knowing that it’s my devotion to my business, my clients & my mission that achieves that for me.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

The first time I hired out another creator to support my biz was this super dope, creative marketing woman. I was about to launch the first official round of my signature group coaching program, Radiance Revealed. I’d run the beta testing group with course content that I had designed myself. When I hired this marketing woman, I had her revamp the design of all the course content, the website, the course pages, everything. The cost was the biggest business expense that I’d ever made by like 10x, and it nearly zero’d out my bank account. And that sh*t looks INCREDIBLE.

Investing in my business and in that program made some subtle parts of myself really get on-board with me running this business; it was like I had little inner nay-sayers, and buying into my biz and my vision with that investment helped more parts of me see like “woah, this b*tch is doing it. She’s making moves. Her content is fire, her course is electric. She’s really doing it”.

I’m about to send my marketing gal a message after I finish writing this to design the content for the next evergreen course that I’ll be releasing in a week – and you know it’s about to be another level up.

Contact Info:

• Website: ellieetzell.com
• Instagram: @mynameisellieetzell
• Youtube: @ellieetzell6021

Image Credits
Jenna Pommaville Liza Laynard Madison Young