Curious about what it’s like to work together? I hope these FAQ’s will help.
How does coaching work?
We meet weekly, by phone and sometimes by Zoom, at a steady and consistent time that is reserved only for you.
Most coaching engagements last 6-24 months, depending on the scope of your goals and our best guess about what would be ideal timeline for you to establish durable, satisfying new habits without shocking your system (because that is an ineffective and unsustainable approach that can ultimately cost you time and energy).
You’ll call me at our appointment time, and we’ll talk for 45-50 minutes on the phone, perhaps sitting or walking outside as we talk, or perhaps from a quiet, private indoor space.
You’ll bring a focus to each session - something you’d like to think about, learn about, or work on together - that relates to your larger goals for your coaching.
In each session, in response to what you’re bringing that day, we’ll draw from multiple modalities in my training, according to what is most important and what you want out of that day’s coaching. We might be in a psycho-educational conversation about executive function skills, drilling down into what makes it hard for you to get started on that project and new, more satisfying moves you could make. We might be using somatic approaches to tune into what’s happening for you in real time as we build these skills. We might be expanding your emotional range by supporting you to experience emotions as they arise, integrating them and bringing greater coherence and meaning. Always, always, we are both tending to your needs in present time and expanding your capacity to handle whatever is on your horizon.
If you’re a college student, and we’re working together in academic wellness coaching, every week we will pop into your learning management system to check on your assignments, make a plan for the scope of work, and identify emerging needs.
One of the cornerstone habits of successful college students is the ability to forecast - to realistically anticipate the work you’ll need to do, and get out ahead of it - so if you don’t already have that habit, we will work to establish it.
Each semester is usually only about 16 weeks long, so it’s really important to map out the rhythm of your day, week, and semester if you want to get your work done with ease (and have time to relax without the stress of overdue work hanging over your head).
By the end of our conversation, you will have chosen some action steps for yourself. These can include approaches, strategies or tools you’d like to try out, practice, or delve into before we meet again. If you’re in college, this will probably include some of the assignments you’re going to work on, finish and submit this week - including, if appropriate, the specific strategies you’ll use to do so.
Whether you’re in college or you’re a working professional, great coaching involves cycles of prototyping and iterating - trying new things, getting imperfect results, learning from the experience, and modifying your approach. We do this over and over, until you’ve got a flexible, workable toolkit that makes sense in your life, feels great, and gets you the results you most desire.
When we start our next call, we’ll check on how those action steps went for you, digest what’s happening around your larger coaching agenda, and get into the focus for that day’s call.
Repeat!
What are your scheduling and cancellation policies?
We choose a steady weekly time to meet, and reserve that time exclusively for you for the duration of our coaching. My schedule is beautifully full each week, so I am rarely able to offer an alternative time, which is why we are careful when we choose our weekly standing time.
If for some reason you need to miss a session, please give me as much notice as you can, so I can use that time well.
In the extremely rare event that someone misses a session without giving me at least 24 hours notice, the card on file will be charged $250. Ouch! This is because I have declined all other opportunities, including income-generating opportunities, family time, and travel, in order to uphold my commitment to our time together.
How are you trained as a coach?
I am a Certified Professional Co-Active coach trained by Co-Active Training Institute, one of the largest and most well-regarded coach training programs in the world.
I am an ICF-certified PCC (Professional Certified Coach), which means I have completed over 125 hours of accredited coach training, have 500+ hours of professional coaching experience, have been coached by MCC-level mentor coaches, and successfully passed the credentialing exam. I will soon qualify for the MCC credential myself, meaning I have over 2,500 hours of professional coaching experience and will have successfully passed the additional requirements for this terminal accreditation.
My professional background includes social work, counseling, and teaching, all of which contribute to my presence as a coach.
I hold a bachelor’s degree in English and Italian and a M.Ed. in teaching literacy K-12. I work as an academic wellness coach at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont in addition to maintaining this private practice with college students and adults.
My formal coach training lineage also includes studies in somatic coaching, ADHD-specific coaching, instructional coaching, somatic trauma resolution, IFS (Internal Family Systems), and social justice-focused coaching work with a specific commitment to culturally responsive coaching.
My informal and experiential coach training comes from the gorgeous gift of thousands of hours of focused coaching with amazing clients from a variety of backgrounds with beautifully wide-ranging sets of goals - and being a voracious auto-didact myself. I devour books and take online courses about coaching, productivity, ADHD, and living a well-lived life (in addition to my fiction reading habit)!
What’s the financial investment?
My standard rates are $975/month or $5,850 for six full months of weekly meetings. When appropriate, I also offer sliding-scale options at $675/month and $850/month. There is sometimes a wait list for sliding-scale spots.
Coaching fees are a wise, grounded, and non-refundable investment in your own development. I invest in our coaching from the very beginning, I do not offer refunds. So…
Are you ease-fully and joyfully able to dedicate the time, energy, and money required to fully engage in your coaching process? You'll get the best results if you "feel" the financial and energetic commitment, but aren't overly burdened by it. And yes, engaging fully with your coaching will ultimately make things much easier, but like any worthwhile developmental process, this will require some attention and effort.
What if you’re incredibly motivated to work together, but daunted by the cost?
Please be good to yourself by not entering into a financial commitment that you won’t be able to uphold with ease and joy.
And, please know that I’ve absolutely been there! In order to work with the incredibly skilled, well-trained coaches I’ve invested in, I have sometimes needed to get incredibly creative. Here are some of the ways I’ve funded my own coaching, for the sake of my own growth:
temporary side-hustles and short-term projects,
offering small sequences of specialized work,
throwing events and offering classes to generate some quick income,
purposefully cutting back on discretionary spending during a certain time frame,
saving up slowly over time,
negotiating for a raise and then allocating that money to coaching, knowing that it is an investment that will absolutely bear financial fruit if that’s one of my goals,
and, although I strongly recommend using new income or savings instead of credit, I’ve also used credit from time to time.
My investment in working with my coaches has paid me back many times over, but I don’t pretend it was always easy.
And, I have come to know that there’s immense value in choosing to get creative for the sake of something you are choosing to prioritize for yourself. Deciding to commit to coaching - and figuring out how to afford it with ease - can be its own mini-masterclass on becoming the person you want to become in the financial realm of your life.
You can do this. Most people are far more powerful than we believe ourselves to be, with many more options than we believe we have - including financially. If coaching with me feels right for you, and now’s the time (or almost the time), I believe in your ability to do what it takes to make it happen - whether that’s generating new income, allocating funds in innovative ways, saving up over time, or another creative healthy option.
When I am able to do so, and when it’s appropriate, I also offer sliding scale options - please see above. These spots are for motivated clients who cannot access coaching at standard rates, and I prioritize access for members of historically marginalized communities and groups who are disproportionately affected by income inequities.
I am also in the process of developing some free and low-cost materials to offer for those who are interested in my body of work but not able to invest the money, time, or energy to engage in weekly coaching with me. This is definitely not the same as having a highly attuned, well-trained coach in your corner every week, but I’ve grown myself exponentially by reading excellent books and materials, and I hope to support you in this way soon, too.
Do you ever barter?
No, although I used to. I absolutely love alternative economies, but as a one-woman business owner and single-parent head of household, I am responsible for providing for my family financially. In addition, years of experience have taught me that:
For some reason, bartering seems to diminish the rigor in the coaching. I don’t know why this is, but people tend to take the work more seriously (and therefore get more vibrant, satisfying results) when paying for coaching with the beautiful, fungible resource that is money.
Bartering for coaching sometimes requires emotional and administrative labor for both parties that a clean, consensual financial exchange doesn’t - and I am no longer up for that type of additional work.
When relational messiness occurs around our payment agreement, it can be bad for the coaching relationship, which undermines the work you’re here to do. And because I am very, very serious about my clients getting incredible results, I’m committed to us setting us up for success in every way we can.
What if I achieve all of my initial coaching goals earlier than we planned - do we end our coaching early?
That will be incredible! I will be cheering and doing cartwheels as we celebrate your beautiful achievement!
At that point, it’s up to you whether we continue to meet or not - though I recommend that you make use of the remaining sessions, because there is always more we can explore, develop and grow, and it seems like a shame to waste the opportunity.
Either way, you are responsible for completing our financial contract by finishing out the payments we agreed upon when we began.