Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Emily Schickli. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Emily, appreciate you joining us today. Can you recount a time when the advice you provided to a client was really spot on? (Please note this response is for education/entertainment purposes only and shouldn’t be construed as advice for the reader)
I work with folks who are looking to reclaim their time, energy, and sense of magic. One of my clients had a really ambitious goal, but kept feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and stuck about taking steps toward it. I shared with her:
The state of your nervous system affects everything. It doesn’t matter if you have a S.M.A.R.T goal, all the time in the world, and a few cups of coffee. If you’re in a stress state (fight, flight or freeze), you unconsciously feel unsafe. No amount of desire or planning will be able to get you there unless you regulate your nervous system, first. So there are two big opportunities here: first, introduce a consistent and reliable stress-relieving practice for yourself, like the butterfly hug, breath work, or somatic shaking. Over time, this practice will help bring you back into balance and reduce stress even as you take bold action. Second, let’s get clear on what’s causing your overwhelm and stuck state––at the root. Often we think it’s just a surface-level thing, like this is just a busy season that’ll pass or I didn’t sleep well the night before, but often there’s something else deeper underneath that that’s a larger pattern. Once we can identify that block (make it conscious), we can take steps toward shifting it.
Here’s what I mean: there’s a reason why there’s so much talk about “self-sabotage” in the coaching industry, but the term is misleading. You see, our unconscious mind (our more primal part of our brain) determines 95% of all human behavior, according to neuroscience research. And the main things our unconscious mind cares about are our basic needs: feeling safe, seen, and understood. So if you have a belief in there that counters whatever goal you’re racing towards, like “if I become super successful, my friends won’t want to hang out with me anymore” (aka the primal fear of not belonging or being understood), it’s kind of like trying to run up a down escalator. Stresses like that throw our nervous system into survival mode, and when we’re in survival mode, we don’t care about the goal we have or imagined success––we just want to feel safe. The key to shifting that is through both conscious (like the stress-relief practices and talking with your friends) and unconscious work (neuro linguistic programming, hypnosis, somatic work, and more).
Emily, 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?
I used to feel like I was running on a hamster wheel that couldn’t stop. I had to-do lists for work, to-do lists for all the life tasks, and to-do lists for my dreams. I was working long hours at a tech startup in Silicon Valley, and I was so focused on contorting my wild, creative self into the image of the perfect employee that I didn’t hear my body yelling at me to slow down and rest until it was too late.
I burned out––hit not only by the feeling that I couldn’t keep up anymore but also by chronic fatigue, daily migraines, myofascial pain, and gut issues.
It took years of self-discovery, research, practice, and support, but eventually I healed my body, my relationship to my time and energy, and ultimately, my relationship to my intuition. I rekindled the magic I felt in childhood and adolescence and reclaimed my spiritual practices and abilities. I started reading Oracle cards for coworkers in the back of conference rooms in secret. In 2017, I got my yoga and meditation teacher credential and shortly afterwards became a Reiki Master and certified life coach. My ability to communicate with the spirit world reawakened, and I started studying the shamanic arts as well as behavioral psychology, NLP, the nervous system, somatic experiencing, and more.
Eventually, I brought together all the different disciplines from both East and West into one powerful framework that shifted my relationships to my time, energy, and magic, and as a result, helped me step into the highest version of myself. I knew I needed to share this process with others, and so I started my coaching business. Now, 8 years after I first burned out, I lead mindful art and wellbeing workshops for workplaces like Google, Course Hero, Microsoft, and more, as well as mentor busy women who are looking to reclaim their time, energy, and sense of magic. I also host online courses to teach folks how to harness the power of the intuitive arts while navigating their messy, modern lives.
All too often, people think that you have to choose between being spiritual and being successful in a modern, corporate workplace. I’ve found that when my clients connect with their own sense of magic, however, they become even more successful, confident, and happy at work and at home. In fact, on average, my clients double their energy and feel 1.5 times more confident managing their time after working with me, which has had a direct positive impact on their lives and careers. Clients have been promoted, received better review ratings, increased their overall wellbeing, deepened their relationships, and more. To help more folks get access to this magic, I published a book last year: Busyness to Magic: The 95-Day Journal Planner.
Can you open up about how you managed the initial funding?
When I started my business 5 years ago, so many folks in entrepreneurship told me that no one took a part-time entrepreneur seriously. Coaches at the time were encouraging their new business clients to quit the day job and dedicate themselves to their business so they could become quick successes––reach 6 figures in one year or even 6 months. But the reality is that the overwhelming majority of businesses are not overnight successes and not having another revenue stream while starting a business puts a lot of pressure both on the business as well as the entrepreneur.
As someone who’s worked in many jobs and fields––teaching, tech, retail––I was both scrappy and risk-averse. I didn’t quit. Instead, I started my business as a side hustle and kept at it for the first four years of my business––even after my business was making ¾ of my full-time salary in the tech industry. And I’m so glad that I did. Keeping my business as a side hustle was tiring, especially towards the end when I was working 6 days of the week and most nights, but it taught me how to be really efficient with my time and energy. In fact, I developed a lot of my own coaching tools and frameworks because I needed them to manage my overwhelming work schedule.
As a result, I also was able to bootstrap my entire business without taking out a loan, getting a grant, or finding investors. It’s enabled me to grow my business in a way that has always been aligned with my creativity and mission because I didn’t put such pressure on it right away to make money and support my living expenses. Now, working full-time for myself, I love that I have the foundations in place and the skillset to maximize my time and energy because of how long I did this balancing act.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
There really are too many resources to name them all here, but if I were to give advice to someone just starting out in the coaching industry, it’s to start old school. Focus on reaching out to friends and family, offering complimentary sessions, and getting referrals. One of the books that does a great job talking about this approach is called The Prosperous Coach. All too often new entrepreneurs focus on trying to get all their fancy funnels and courses up and running right away because they want to “scale.” The truth is, you can’t scale unless you have a great system that already works. Don’t skip the foundations! Work with people one-on-one until you can do it with ease and confidence and each client is getting powerful results. Then and only then, start to automate and expand. You’ll actually save a lot more time if you wait because you’ll only automate processes that work.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://emilyschickli.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/emilyschickli
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/mindbodydharma
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/emilyschickli/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MindBodyDharma
Image Credits
Meghan Smolka
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