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Most of the powerful, unguarded conversations we have as practitioners happen behind the scenes. This podcast was created to bring those conversations forward. It’s a space for real talk about client work, presence, creating powerful containers for waking others up, embodied change, and the ways we continue to grow and meet our edges as we guide others.
Barb Patterson (01:11)
Hi everyone, welcome back. We're so glad you're here. You get both of us today. And today we're going to talk about the mentorship, apprenticeship, relationships we've had that have been so meaningful and transformative for us. And I'm going to kick it right over to you, Eyeliner.
Aila Coats (01:16)
Woohoo!
All right, cool.
Great, yes. So when I was listening to your podcast episode around collaborations and some of the things that you've done that have helped you grow your practice and get your practice going, it just really occurred to me how helpful that was for me a decade in hearing some of your ideas. And I didn't do some of those things at all.
mentor a lot of coaches and it was like they should know about this and and what else am I not saying? What else are we not talking about that has been really like really helpful for us in growing our practices and what occurred to me was this whole notion of apprenticeship mentees mentors mentees apprenticing ⁓ and I'll just say one of the reasons I feel like
I didn't grow my practice as quickly as I could have, really, when I see it that clearly. It's like I was turned off by the coaching profession in this way that it looked like a pyramid scheme. was like coaches coaching coaches. And it just, you know, it wasn't, I didn't actually want to coach coaches at all. I wanted to coach teenagers and young adults and spiritual seekers. And
When at some point I realized like I'm not figuring this out on my own. I had done coach training. I had done different programs to get good at coaching, but I wasn't figuring out the business end. And I also realized I had huge blind spots about how to actually create clients and merge my soulful spiritual self with my sales self and how to do that. It looked so complicated.
confusing to me and this idea of not wanting to be a coach that has a coach was just getting in the way. And I remember when I talked to Michelle Bauman, who was my coach right before she passed away, ⁓ I talked with her about this and she was like, she totally got it. She understood this. She went through the same thing in a way. But it's like this.
you know, getting clear that if I want to learn something, anything, the quickest way to do it is to be with somebody who's doing it and to see what they're doing, not to mimic it or repeat it or anything like that, but to see it as a pathway and the thinking behind it. And that was, that's the real thing that, can be so transformational working with a coach who's doing it, how you want to be doing it is you get to get an inside look.
at their thought process and where they're coming from. ⁓ the apprenticeship model, just, I am so bought in as this, this is, it feels like the new wave of education. And I was telling you earlier about Orion, my nine-year-old, we're doing this unschooling ⁓ way of being with our kids. And really in the unschooling community, it's this appreciation that
We don't need to go learn about things ⁓ extensively before we start doing them. We can go learn on the job. And so an apprenticeship way, like the way that he'll learn things and is currently learning things is by going anything he's interested in. We go and find somebody who's doing it and let him do it with them. He's doing jewelry making right now with my mom and he's making these.
beautiful pieces of jewelry that are just like I'm wearing them. They're like beautiful. Last year I remember he was so fascinated by breeding little guppies and mollies and they're called, what are they called? Muppies, these little fish. So we went and we found somebody in our town that does that and he got to see the whole setup.
and like really learn what goes into taking care of fish. And we ended up having, I think at some point, five aquariums in our house. And he was just on the job, failing, killing fish left and right, breeding them. I mean, on the job, learning and growing. And he could teach anybody now how to breed mollies and guppies and make muppies as a nine-year-old. And I just see this model of
of learning with somebody who's doing it, it's just, if you, like, I'm not always in a hurry, but I do like to do the thing I wanna do as efficiently as I can. And I see the apprenticeships and the really ⁓ high touch coaching that I've received. Every time I've invested in that for myself, especially at the beginning, it's like exponential growth, exponential learning. I can't.
dismiss it as something that people ⁓ shouldn't do if they want that, if they want to move forward in a deliberate kind of way in their work. I'll start there. I think I said everything I wanted to say right there.
Barb Patterson (06:59)
⁓ Thanks, everyone. no,
I, you know, when you talk about the schooling and Orion, I or anytime I get to hear stories of the unschooling you're doing, I always think that's exactly what I needed. I would have thrived in that environment. Because anytime I just started to get into the activity of the thing.
My learning curve accelerated and I learned more about where my sweet spots were, where they weren't, what I enjoyed, what I didn't. ⁓ So that sort of let's just get in there and then learn as we go along. But having somebody that is further along, somebody that's doing it and their craft has demonstrated something that draws you.
you're inspired by in their craft, think is great. And it also reminds me that in my corporate world, my career inside a company, some of my favorite leaders and bosses were the ones that like brought me in. You know, brought me into the room with all the executives, even though I might not have shared or they gave me a little bit. But watching that.
watching the exchange and learning how this person phrased things and how they dealt with conflict or with things not going well. Like that was like irreplaceable. And so I have always been a learner of like by observation and getting in there. Observation, get in there, you know, or just get in there and figure it out along the way, right? And so ⁓
Yeah, for me, when I really look at what's helped me accelerate in either in my career or when I was inside a company or my business, it's been when I've partnered, like I've said, okay, I'm going to invest in this or I'm going to ask this person to mentor me or do an apprenticeship, which I've done as well. And I just also want to comment.
I do get, like me too, it's funny for a while I was like, I didn't even want to call myself a coach. Like, there's stuff because I think, you know, maybe the listeners will resonate with this because, you know, our algorithms and what we look at and search and who we follow are sometimes people in our field or, you know, a close cousin. ⁓
Aila Coats (09:22)
Hehehe.
Barb Patterson (09:39)
it can look like you can get inundated with all this messaging and some of it is just such a turn off. It's so easy. And pretty soon it's like, wait, I don't want to do that. Ew. Or, ⁓ you know, like we start to feel the repulsion versus like, wait a minute. No, this is, I actually love the work I do. You know, I love the work.
So how do I remember to do it in a way that's authentic and aligned to me? And that's my expression. And that's absolutely doable. And there are periods in my career when I could feel, ⁓ OK, it's enough learning. Let's spend some time just being out there on your own, making your own choices, getting in there, doing the thing.
Aila Coats (10:10)
Yeah.
Barb Patterson (10:31)
And those are really important seasons, right? I think those are really valuable. And some of my most accelerated times have been because I've put myself in the student seat. And so, yeah, think when our hope on this podcast and the work we're doing is that we share all of it, all the things that lessons learned.
Aila Coats (10:31)
Yes.
Yeah.
Barb Patterson (10:58)
You know, and so I would also say that that proximity that an apprenticeship mentorship doesn't depends on the person depends on the setup. ⁓ Mentorship can be incredibly valuable because you're getting that deep grounding or deep look at your work with other people like it can be really impactful. What I like about the apprenticeship model or the way that you and I think about it is it's like
proximity to all of it. It's, you know, how do you make decisions? What do you do when things don't work out in your business? How do you, let me watch you work in deep with somebody else. Let me work with you over time so you can get a sense of me and where my blind spots are that I might not see. And so I think the...
Like there's a healthy skepticism and then there's a don't throw the baby out with the bath water kind of idea.
Aila Coats (12:00)
Yeah,
totally. Well, and I don't think that everybody needs a coach all the time. I don't. ⁓ But I also know my tendency is when I really am struggling and really kind of embarrassed at what's happening inside my life. It's when I could use the most help. It's also the time when I least want it.
Barb Patterson (12:28)
Yeah.
Aila Coats (12:28)
And so I get that it takes like vulnerability, takes humility to ask for help. And I think that was my big learning curve for a long time. I'm very competent in so many ways. And it was pretty amazing to just feel like a total failure when it comes to, when it came to starting my practice and making a living at it. It was like the first time.
It was almost like when I tried to play piano when I was like seven. It was like, I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't do it. And that feeling was so painful because everything else came so naturally. But the piano, could say it really felt similar starting my practice. was like, I'm not, I don't know if this is for me because of how hard I find all of it. And yet there's a thing in me that really wants to do it. And it was a big.
to just get over myself and really get on my own team in a way. And just, I got really committed. Like, I'm gonna give this everything I've got. And what would I recommend to a friend in my situation?
Go find somebody who's doing it how you want to do it and learn from them.
Aila Coats (13:44)
go find somebody who's doing the work in a way that you admire and you respect and you'd feel really good about it if you were doing it that way, go find somebody and risk being seen by them, like really seen and.
And it is vulnerable because it's confronting. It's like for me, I had to get honest about how limited my thinking was around Lenny. And when I would go to Steve and I would say, want to create Steve Chandler, I'd say, I want to create $3,000 this week. He'd be like, great. I'm like, it's not great. This is a problem. He was like, you could decide that you want to create $30,000 this week.
Like you get to decide anything and get up to playing with creating it. Like why does this look hard to you? I was like, what? Why doesn't this look hard to you? Tell me all about that. And that kind of transformation, I think it really for me only happened through being in close proximity with somebody who was not only doing the work with other people the way I really want it.
to do, but they were living it. They were being creative and expansive and authentic in their own lives. for Steve, I kept working with Steve for all those years because his mind was so open and it was so healing for me to see what that looks like to live inside of a really open, creative mind. And it just rubbed off on me. I I let it. I'm like, yes.
This is natural. This is how I feel like we're designed to be. And his health was so healing for me. ⁓ And just to bring every little thing that's like, I'm afraid of staying my feet today. He's like, cool. Yeah, I've been there. Let's talk about it. Just every little, as honest as possible. That's the kind of support I'd want anybody to have.
who's learning how to do something they really care about but is running into hiccups along the way. It's like get help as quickly as you can, the best way you can, because why not?
Barb Patterson (16:08)
Yeah, yeah, and I think for me it was the observing of the work that like just thrilled me and really helped me deepen my own grounding and deepen my impact and being able to like talk about it. you know, I remember, you know, sometimes in those debrief sessions when, you know, we would have those conversations about
you know, why'd you go there? I mean, the truth is, every coach, nothing will look the same and where we go is good. Like, you know, you want to see like there's no one way or one better way. But when you're, you know, able to observe work being done, whether it's in a group or one on one,
or it's in how you do intake calls, like all of that. You just start to really go into a deeper quality of your own exploration and reflection around the work and why you do what you do and how you might want to expand or how you hadn't thought of something like you said before. you know, I think intake calls is like a really kind of simple example. When I first started partnering with George and Linda,
we got this company and I watched George do intake calls. Now, as a part of my career, I'd done intake calls forever. But I had intake as sort of information gathering. And what I watched was him get them reflective, get them see him directing the questions in a way so that he could learn how they see the world and then what he was doing with that information like.
It was so fun, first of all, just to be like, my god, I'm so arrogant. The moment you think you have nothing to learn or you already know is such a great time to go, wait a minute, I'm full of the ass right now. Because any time I've challenged that, I see something new. But that's a small example. But also, ⁓
Aila Coats (18:03)
How fun!
Hehehe.
Barb Patterson (18:24)
You know, the, I shared one time working with George again, just because it was so fresh for me. He never got discouraged in this session with a really resistant client. And basically afterwards, I said, I noticed that. I noticed that you didn't get resistant. And then we had this amazing conversation about how as a coach, you have to keep your eye out for that. Like the worst.
you don't when you get discouraged, you got to you got to work on you, got to shift you got to you know, and it was just again, you know, such a great way of being pointed both to the grounding like oh, yeah, start with us first, but then also the craft, like being able to observe people that have been doing it a while or that you admire and you start to really appreciate the craft they have and the goal is not to imitate.
Aila Coats (18:55)
Yes.
Barb Patterson (19:20)
You know, it's never to imitate. But what happens in those ⁓ conversations and debriefs and preps, thinking, like even the prep when we would prep together for a client, you know, like those conversations because, you know, I'd be learning from them. And in a way, they would learn from me because I had been more in the world than they had. This is how George used to say it.
So even having that partnership and conversation around prepping, what are you keeping your eye on? What are you noticing? What are you hearing? Like those were just invaluable and they lit me up. Like that's the kind of stuff that lights me up is that level of learning and then of course it can't help but influence your impact and your confidence.
Aila Coats (20:08)
Yeah, well, and I love the ⁓ tactical, practical nature of apprenticeship, mentoring, and then the inside the work piece. Like both, because they're both, I wasn't interested in becoming more effective in my coaching sessions when I first hired a coach. that, mean, arrogance, talk about arrogance, but the truth was it was like, I've been at this for 20 years.
Barb Patterson (20:29)
Yeah. Yeah.
Aila Coats (20:37)
I've been meditating, you know, was like very much, got this part and I didn't see, I just didn't even know what was on offer from getting in and doing, running game film and like being in, in witnessing. had Steve come into some sessions I did with my clients and asked him if he'd coach them and I'd get to be there. I'd co, I'd co, but really I was, I was there to learn.
And that was another, I used my time with him for that. I was like, can I do a session where you're coaching these clients? I had three clients that I asked him to help me with. And it was, my clients loved it, obviously they loved it, but they, and they, I remember talking to another coach about that and she said, aren't you afraid they're just going to ditch you and hire Steve? I was like, yeah, it's a risk I'm willing to take. It's a, yeah. Yeah.
Barb Patterson (21:30)
Yeah, no, people, I think that's important to talk about because I
do think we keep ourselves from learning because we have this subtle, limited idea about that, or we worry that it'll affect our reputation or our credibility. Because, I used to bring when I was in an apprenticeship kind of relationship where that was a part of the agreement, I might bring them in.
Aila Coats (21:46)
Yeah.
Yes.
Barb Patterson (22:00)
to a session, to a group session, or we might do something together as I shared in the collaboration ⁓ episode. But ⁓ it never did that. never did that. Exactly, yeah.
Aila Coats (22:10)
No, I know nobody ever left me for Steve. Yeah. And but even
with, ⁓ I would ask some coaches like yourself that I really admire and respected and you did things different than I did. I'd ask coaches to come and be guest coaches in every program I've run with groups. I've had guest coaches come and I get that question every time. Like, why do you do that? It's like, because I,
Well, for one, I want to help people in the best way I can. And I know that we all receive people, we receive information in different ways. And you say things different than I say things. And even if the spirit behind it is the same, it's going to land differently for different people. so I love that. But selfishly, I learn every time I'm witnessing a coach that I really respect.
coach. I learned so much. And I think that's ⁓ another cool part about the notion of apprenticing. It's never ending. It's like, you know, with our kids, we're, we're wanting to instill a love of learning.
Yeah, the love of learning, never ending, always evolving learning. I'll probably be somebody's apprentice at some point again, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah.
Barb Patterson (23:31)
I agree, me too, I hope so. And maybe that's kind
of the overall message we want to give in this is as Isla and I think about, you know, as we where we started, like what's been the most meaningful for us as we've built our practices and our craft and our impact and you know, it has been when
One of the main factors has been putting ourselves in the student seat and apprenticeship is just one of those unique relationships we wanted to bring forward for today. And so, ⁓ Ila just got bumped out. We were bringing it to a close, so I'm gonna do that on my own and just say, as always, we're so glad you're here and we just wanna encourage you, you know, no matter where you're at.
whether you're brand new or you've been at this for a long time, where might you benefit from putting yourself into the student seat? Impact and depth of feeling and depth of insight and layers falling away, ⁓ that is never ending. So I don't say that to mean that we should be vigilant and hyper about always learning, but...
just knowing that many of us are in this because of the love of learning, learning more about ourselves and being able to use that in our work. So we want to encourage all of you to see where could you put yourself in the student seat right now. All right, lots of love until next time.