Ep #290: Wanderwild + Coaching Gratitude

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey, coaches, this is going to be a fun episode today. I’m keeping it casual. I am going to tell you a little bit about my summer trip experience going to the Wanderwild Retreat. It’s a mommy and me camping trip that has yoga and breathwork and lots of mom time and Montessori/for school activities for kids and you’re camping. It’s a glamping, you’re in airstreams. And that was the first part of my Cape Cod two week summer trip that ended going to Brooklyn for my good friend Kara Loewentheil’s wedding. Congratulations, Kara.

But I had the craziest experience getting to this retreat and then the best ending to getting there. And it really transformed or furthered and deepened my belief in the impact of coaching. And I am very committed to explaining to you all the different ways the value of being constantly coached in your life has, the impact it has on your life experience.

Because I believe that some of you are listening and maybe have never been coached and would love to be coached, but you haven’t really been able to get yourself to do it because you are so afraid it won’t produce what maybe you want. Or you don’t see that you could maybe have the experience that you hear other people have. Or this is the biggest reason and my biggest hunch because most people who listen to this episode are already coaches or are working to become coaches and have decided to become coaches.

Many of you struggle to sell the value of coaching and to really understand the impact for your people when they are stuck in their objections, obstacles, real life issues and concerns. And where you kind of get stuck is this kind of transactional mindset of, you’re just thinking about the immediate thing you’re going to be working on them with. And not the overall impact of having been coached and learning coaching tools that it will have on their entire lives.

And this is an example that just really hit home to me for so many reasons that I won’t be able to go into on this episode. But I want to tell you the story. I want to tell you, it’s a crazy story, and then tell you how it ends and it ends well so you don’t have to freak out. And then also just tell you how the retreat went because so many of you have been asking.

So, this is my story. So, this was the circumstance. We planned this trip almost a year ago. And I, although I don’t camp and I have not camped for 25 years since I was 12 or something. I don’t know. It’s been a very long time. I’m not a camper. I don’t like bugs. I like to be outdoors but at the beach or a pool. But I have a little boy and one of the things I love about having a little boy is I feel like I get to experience childhood all over again from a different lens. I know what it’s like to be a girl child. I know what the childhood of a girl is like because I experienced it.

But I get to experience childhood from a completely different perspective all over again and it’s so fun. And what little boy doesn’t like to go camping? Maybe there are some, but I just thought it would be the sweetest thing. And I have a story that I don’t get to spend as much time with Jackson as Neil because Neil’s his main care provider and watcher. We don’t have a nanny. We haven’t had a nanny for almost a year now. And I work, I work a couple of days a week, but I am away from him working and so I feel that lack of not being with him all the time.

And I was really excited to get to go for three days. I think it was an afternoon, two full days and then a checkout, an afternoon as well on checkout day. And I was really excited to get to do this time with Jackson by ourselves. It meant the world to me. And I prepared like crazy. I mean I’m the crazy person who had camping pajamas, specific camping print pajamas to put him in. And someone gave him for his birthday, a camping set. So, I had a little plastic lantern and a magnifying glass and a tent. I was so, so excited to go on this trip, had carefully packed and planned everything.

They send you a packing list. They really prepare you very well before you go. But I had to go get long socks because I don’t own long socks and we had to get ticks and mosquito stickers for the kids’ clothes, just all the things. And I prepared and I planned with my good friend, Sam, who is my stylist. I’ve had her on the podcast, Samantha Brown. And she has a daughter, Pip, who is Jackson’s age.

And so, we have planned this together for a year and then voice messaging each other and texting each other. And just talking for months of how excited we are for this trip. So, we get prepared. Neil drops us off at the airport. We go through security, we always get flagged and they have to check our bag because we take drinks for Jackson through and we just know that’s a thing. And as soon as the TSA agent says, “You’re good to go”, I get a text that the flight has been canceled and I’m devastated. I mean, utterly devastated.

I walked to the gate and I see the line of people and I’m thinking, oh, this is not good. I’ll be the last person to get to talk to anyone. And I asked someone in line, what’s going on. And they said, “Oh, it’s really bad weather in Boston and New England, there are no flights that are going to be flying out for the rest of the day. And they have told us they’re just going to automatically rebook us on future flights if there are future flights.” And I’m like, “Okay.”

So, I started looking online because I’m the person that will just buy the next flight and then deal with the other stuff later. And so, I start looking and there are absolutely no flights out, not the day that we’re flying, not the next day. I couldn’t see any. And I am just calling Neil, panicking, so sad, come back and get us. We’re not going to be able to go. And then so I leave security, we go ask them, how do we get our bags that we’ve already checked? They said, “You’ll go to baggage claim.” We wait three hours for them to release our bags at bag claim.

And this whole time we have a toddler in the airport and I am just frantically looking up every flight possible from every airport around us, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, if it was a two or three hour drive, I’m even looking at Chicago. I am trying, how do I get us to this trip, which had started that day. So, I knew I was missing the first check-in, afternoon, first dinner, I was missing all of that but I was determined to get us there.

And I go up and I talk to the Delta agent and talk through everything. And there were two flights from Cincinnati, which is two hours from us, 90 minutes from us, the next morning at 6:00am. There is a Delta flight and a Frontier flight. You all know I’m about to make a mistake because I went with Frontier because Delta didn’t have two seats on the entire flight next to each other.

And I talked to them about it and they said, “Well, once you get to the gate, they’ll fix it for you. They should fix it for you. They’re not going to make you sit away from your toddler. Or if you call online, they can do it on the phone system. They can do it on the phone system.” And I waited on hold for an hour and 45 minutes and hung up and finally just decided, let’s go with Frontier. So, we get up at three in the morning or we leave at three in the morning to drive to Cincinnati to get on this flight at 6:00am.

We get there and the security line is like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s so long. We have clear, so I’m like, okay, it’s not going to be that bad, but almost 50 minutes later, we’re still not up to the security person and our flight is boarding. And now I’m like, “Oh, my God, we’re going to miss this flight.” And then a miraculous person shows up and says, “Follow me”, and takes me and my stroller and my toddler to the front of TSA. I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, this is amazing. We’re going to get on the flight. I can’t believe this. What a miracle.”

And she’s checking our passports and she’s checking our tickets and all of a sudden she looks at me and she says, “You can’t get on this flight.” What? She says, “Your birth date is not correct. Frontier did not enter your birth date correct. You’re going to need to go back to check-in, and they have to correct it and then you’re going to have to bring it. You’re going to have to come back through TSA.” And I think I had a panic attack right then and there in the airport.

And I’m telling her, “You don’t understand. I can’t go back. I will never make it back through the security line. My flight is boarding now. I’m going on a three day camping trip with my son and I will miss the whole thing. This was the only flight. This was it. There are no other flights today. This was the only flight. If I go back, I miss the flight.” And she does not care at all, “Too bad, you’ve got to go back.” The frontier people did not help. No one cared. It was awful. We missed the flight. And I am bawling my eyes out in the airport.

My poor husband, who has now left the Louisville Airport and driven almost home and then had to drive back to get us in Louisville, then drove us to Cincinnati. And was all the way out of Cincinnati when I called him to tell him he has to turn around and drive back and get us again. My bags were already boarded and sent to Boston, even though we couldn’t go. I’m crying hysterically. I do not know what to do and I am so devastated. And I’m just looking at my poor little sweet toddler and just mourning the memories I had created in my head already.

I do this thing where it works so well in my business where I am able to envision something so clearly that it’s like it happened. But then if it doesn’t happen, the disappointment is so extreme for me. And I just couldn’t believe it. And this retreat is once a year. It felt like when our honeymoon got canceled. This happened on our honeymoon. We got married in Napa, had the most outrageous dream wedding, everything was amazing. We’re on a high, we fly to LA, we have the perfect day in Manhattan Beach.

We go to the airport and this was during COVID, and our planner, we had six weeks to plan a COVID wedding. So, we had a honeymoon planner and we had to turn over everything to her. Even two weeks out we didn’t even know if we were serving pizza or if the venue was actually going to serve food for our guests that were flying in. And she didn’t tell us that we had to apply to get into French Polynesia and that you have to do it seven days in advance and have all this paperwork.

And so, in the middle of LAX, this guy tells me, “You’re not going on your honeymoon, get out of this airport”, basically. And we had to fly all the way back home to Kentucky and wait two weeks and fly back. It was awful. And so, I am feeling so just the worst of the worst and thinking to myself, this feels worse than that because it’s my son. And I was so, so excited and I am devastated.

But this is the power of coaching. My brain goes back to work. I just can’t give up. I have become this person through coaching where I am unable to accept a loss. And I think that this is a good thing, for better or worse, this is a good thing. I do not, for the most part, ever see this being something that I would ever think is not a good trait. I love that I cannot accept a loss. And so, I am just Googling and I’m trying all the things.

And I don’t know where this flight came from because I had searched so many times, but I see a flight from United and maybe I just didn’t consider it because I knew it was going to miss so much of the trip, maybe that was what it was the first time. But it was through United, two different stops. So not a direct flight, two different stops to get to Boston. It would have me getting to Boston at, I think 8:00pm at night. And so, we would not get to Cape Cod until 10:00 or 11:00. And I just at this point could not accept the loss.

And I thought, okay, I will get one day of this three day retreat and one day is better than no day and I just cannot wait another year. I wasn’t afraid that they wouldn’t credit me or that I would just be out of the retreat money. I didn’t even care about that. But I could not wait another year to camp with my son and do this retreat and be with my friend. My friend is already there. And I wanted these memories with her daughter and my son. I just couldn’t not be there.

And so, I tell my husband, “Let’s drive back to Louisville.” Now, I don’t have my luggage, so I’m like, “Take me home first, I’m going to find what we possibly still have left in this house that we could pack for this camping trip and we’re just going to figure it out.” The bare bones of the bare bones of whatever did not get packed for this trip, let’s figure it out. And it’s so interesting how I packed so much in preparation. And then when it was down to the nitty gritty, it was one tiny travel suitcase that had one change of clothes for each of us.

And then we’re driving home and I tell him, I’m sitting there thinking we’re almost, actually I think we got home. I had already started packing. We put Jackson down for a nap and it’s 8:00am, 9:00am, I think it’s 8:30. We both feel like it’s noon. It’s 8:30 in the morning. Jackson’s already napping.

And I tell him, “Neil, this is going to sound crazy, but what if there was a private flight that I could somehow miraculously book very quickly that would get us there faster? I know you’re probably going to say no but I feel like if it were this amount or under, I would pay it.” We don’t do that anymore, ever since we had our kid, we just think it’s so outrageous and we are very much using our money for future focused things. But I just looked at him, “I think I would be willing to do it this time.” I’m exhausted. We had no sleep.

We had driven 400 miles in airports for eight hours. And I could do it and I was going to do it. I was going to go back to Louisville Airport and get on that United flight and take two flights and hope they both left on time and hoped that neither of them got canceled or that I didn’t get stranded in a different city with Jackson. I was going to do it. That’s how committed I was. I just could not accept the loss. And he’s like, “I don’t even know how you would get a hold of these people. The person we used to contact isn’t even there anymore.”

And so, I get into an email that I don’t even use anymore. I figure out how to get back in. I searched this guy’s name. The email happens to have a cell phone. I text the cell phone. An hour later someone else texts me back and says, “I’m the new person.” And I just say, “Listen, this is my budget. If you can get me anywhere in the vicinity of Cape Cod faster than this commercial flight, I will pay you right now.” By the way, this made me think about how clients come out of nowhere.

I was thinking about how this person is working and has no idea that someone’s about to text them and say, “I will literally leave in two hours if you can book me a flight.” And I was thinking how so many people are thinking that about coaching. They’re just in so much pain in any given moment you could be the person they reach out to and they say, “Let’s talk. Can you talk today? Can you talk tomorrow? I’m ready.” Because they’re in that much pain.

I love to think about people putting their finger on the message or the send button, and they’re doing it every day, every day. That moment has to happen where they’re in such pain that they’re finally ready to reach out and you have to be prepared to take care of it. And this woman was freaking on it. 30 minutes later she had two charters back-to-back and was like, “This one’s cheaper, but it can’t leave until this time. And this one’s a little bit more expensive but it leaves at this time, both are around your budget.”

And I look at Neil and I’m like, “Okay, we can pay this much and I can leave at noon and be there at 2:00pm direct.” And they’ll fly me straight to Cape Cod. Actually, I think we found that out in the air, that they were flying me directly to Cape Cod and not Boston. That’s a funny story for another minute. But if you can get me there. And Neil said, “You’re so exhausted. I’m so exhausted. I just want you guys to get there. If it means this much to you to take this trip with Jackson, I’m on board. This one time let’s make it happen.” And so, we make it happen.

And I’ve been burned on so many private charters before that I couldn’t even let myself be excited. I didn’t even text my friend until we were in the air because I did not want, I’ve had so many of them sold out from underneath me or we get on the plane and they’re like, “The radio’s broken. We can’t leave.” And it’s this tiny plane and we get on and take off. And I’m like, “Oh, my God, we’re actually going.” And the entire experience was so emotional for me.

I kept thinking the whole flight, Jackson was watching Buzz Lightyear the movie with his little Toy Story blanket, eating little rice snacks that the plane had in a little basket. And I am just sitting there thinking, I can’t believe this was possible. And I know that this isn’t possible for everyone, 100%, and this is not how I will solve all of my problems always. But for one time to have the money to solve the problem, to have the resourcefulness to figure it out that quickly, the dedication, the refusal to give in and to fail and to quit and to miss this trip.

Just all of it combining, I just had tears streaming down my face. Then my son hops in my lap and we must have been flying low enough that we were flying right with the clouds. And he starts going, “Cloud.” And he’s never said cloud before. And I am just overjoyed and emotional, I can’t even tell you. And I’m texting my friend and she’s like, “Oh, my God, what a flex to arrive at a woman’s retreat by private jet.”

And that was not even, I told absolutely no one that’s how we got there. I didn’t want anyone to know, but we got there, we freaking got there. And we did find out in the air that they were taking us to Hyannis, I think is what it’s called, their Atlantic Aviation Hub in Cape Cod. So, we also had to pay for a courier service to go to Boston and get our bags and drive them to me to the campsite, but we got there. It was the most incredible experience.

And so, I was telling my good friend, Melanie, and I was texting her on the plane. And she said something that was so profound to me. She said, “You must write this story down because Jackson needs to know that this is how much his mother wanted to spend time with him. That his mother was not a business owner who canceled things and said sorry, it’s not going to work out. I don’t have time. I have to work. His mother was so present and so dedicated to him that this is how hard she fought for him to spend one and a half days with him by herself on a camping trip.”

And I thought about that and it was really impactful for me because I think I know that coaching is what taught me, again how to be so resourceful, how to not give up, how to search every single option, how to focus on the solution instead of the emotions that build up in our body and our brain wanting to just escape how awful it feels. And it’s coaching that taught me how to love so hard and care so much about these memories with my child, even though he won’t remember them but I will.

And to be so present and so on in his life in the time that I have and to just want his experiences and joy this much. I could not have been this type of mother without coaching. I did not receive this type of childhood. I did not receive this type of love, this type of attention. And I don’t have any anger or blame towards my parents. I love when Byron Katie says everyone’s doing the best they can with what they were given and I really deeply believe that. I believe that about my parents. I believe that about my childhood.

But it really felt like such a deep example of breaking generational childhood trauma and generational blocks and not feeling loved and cared for and important and not feeling seen by your parents and it was phenomenal. And then we got in the car service to take us there and I told Jackson, “We are not arriving with a tornado behind us.”

I have a Hay House Meditations on my podcast list. And so, I just searched for one that was releasing stress or something, releasing tension, I don’t remember. And we listened for an entire hour on the drive there, just in traffic. It was 30 miles away and an hour to get there, but we listened to it the whole time. And we arrived and it was just the most incredible arrival. Everyone was so incredibly sweet. They had all been waiting and praying for me. And my friend had saved us lunch. And they just we’re so, they helped us with all of our bags. They were so, so, so great.

Every woman, there was someone from Louisville there, which was so crazy, so hopefully I’ve met a new friend. But everyone just was so overjoyed that we made it. And one lady said to me at dinner, she said, “I really expected you to come in very frazzled but you look like you’ve come from a spa vacation somewhere.” And I just really attributed that, I told her, I was like, “I’m not coming in and dumping all of my experience onto all of you. I wanted to come in and step in as if I’d been here the whole time and I wanted to just join how I imagined I would feel, how relaxed I imagined I would feel if I had arrived here on time.”

And Jackson had so much fun. He loved the camp. And the cutest thing he did the whole time is, they’re airstreams, they all look the same. So, he would just go up to people’s doors all the time and try to go in them and be so confused. And I would have to wave at people at their windows when they’re, like, “Who’s trying to break in?” I’m like, “Sorry, he thinks this is ours, it’s not.” But we had the most amazing time. I met the most amazing women.

There was a neurosurgeon there, an environmental lawyer, there was my stylist, there was me. There were just so many incredible women, single mothers. It was so healing to me, even to have conversations with the owner that runs the retreat. Everyone was so supportive. I cannot wait to go back, I just, I can’t. It’s going to be a yearly thing that I want to do so badly. We got to go hike The Knob in Cape Cod and Falmouth, if you’re familiar.

I’m choking up. It was so beautiful that I can’t believe I almost missed it. And I’m so grateful I fought so hard for it and it was just magical. And because they did such a great job with packing all of the time I didn’t feel like I missed so much. On the last day we went until almost 1:00pm, so we did the hike for The Knob on the last day, and we had a lunch. We had a breakfast. I got to talk to so many people and just meet so many people.

Again, one of the other things my friend Melanie said to me is, she said, “I bet you experience this deeper than other people because you missed some of it. You’re going to be just so on and so present, trying to just make up time and get every ounce that you can in the limited time you have.” And I really felt that, I felt that so, so deeply. Normally I would be so in my head and socially awkward about meeting new people. And I just jumped in and decided everyone wanted me to jump in.

Everyone was looking to make friends. Everyone wanted to be a part of the conversation. I just had so, so, so much fun and I’m just so grateful. I’m so grateful that coaching gives us these opportunities to fight for the things that we want and to think from all the different angles and perspectives. And to be present and engaged and not give up and create our own experiences and exactly what we want. I can’t even properly articulate it.

I feel it just so deeply in my whole body, in my bones, the power of having had access to this for the last 10 years and to get these different perspectives and to just fully live and play full out. Again, I know that the solution isn’t always, I know so many of you can’t solve your problems by chartering a private plane and neither do I anymore. But I would have taken that other flight and I would have done the exact same thing. I would have taken those two flights. I would have traveled for eight hours. I would have gotten in late. We would have gone to bed.

I would have woke up the next morning and I would have started making memories. No tornadoes behind me, just fully present, fully engaged and so grateful. I didn’t even feel angry that we missed it. I just felt so grateful I got what I got. And it’s such a different perspective for who I used to be that it really blows my mind. Alright, that’s my story.

And if you want a little amusing tidbit. I don’t care, I’ll tell you all, it’ll make you laugh. This is when my husband said, “This was not the luxury experience you were expecting.” So, my husband and I travel a lot with Jackson and we have yet to ever have to change a dirty diaper, well, until this trip, we had to do two on this trip, but we’d never had to change a dirty diaper on the airplane. And we’ve always been so, so grateful for that.

In this tiny little plane that we’re flying in, Jackson drops a bomb on the plane. It stinks so bad and I’m like, “Oh, my God, how am I going to change this diaper?” It’s such a small plane, there’s no bathroom and the seats are so small, and my child is 36 inches already. He’s so tall. So, I have his head and half of his chest on a seat with his legs up in the air, trying to change his dirty diaper. And everyone laughs because I never change the dirty diapers, you all, ever.

I carried him for nine months. I had a traumatic birth. I had hyperemesis when I was pregnant, and two years of postpartum anxiety. My husband gets to change the dirty diapers. So, he’s much better at it because he’s much more skilled at it. I’ve maybe changed 30 since he’s been born. I don’t know, not a lot. And so, I’m not as good at it.

And I’m trying to change it in this private plane and the diaper, I move him ever so slightly and it goes to fall. And I know it’s a private plane so I instinctually grab for the diaper and grab an entire scoop of poop in my hand, a whole plop of it. And then it falls out of my hand and goes down my leg. This is motherhood just for all of you who have probably had some experience.

So now I’m telling my friend Melanie and my husband, I’m dying laughing hysterically, messaging them, sanitizing, using wipes. I’m going to need a shower as soon as I get there. So, my husband said it was not the bougie experience I expected. But other than that, it was the most amazing time, totally worth it.

And I will just leave you with, spend time, please spend time thinking about the tiny everyday impacts that coaching will have on your people, not just while they’re working with you, not just six months from now or three months from now, but for the rest of their life. What are the generational habits that are causing them pain that they don’t have to move forward with anymore for themselves personally, for their spouses, for their children? What are the things that have been passed down to them that if they didn’t get help, could keep going?

What are the new ways, how they could think and feel in their lives that would be infinitely worth it if they coached with you, if they had that? To me, just who I am and how I show up to my son now, I could make a list of 100 ways coaching has impacted how I parent and how I show up to my child. And each one of those would be worth all of the money that I have invested in coaching. And it’s all relative.

So even though I have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars. For some people that list might be worth it for them to invest $3,000, just $3,000 or $,6000 or whatever your coaching price is. But it’s not just the container that they’re purchasing from you. It’s how they live their life from every moment moving forward. And the more you believe that, the easier it will be for you to sell coaching.

Okay, so I hope I gave you some hope, some love. I hope also that you were able to laugh a little bit. Go check out Wanderwild Retreats. We’ll link it up in the show notes. If you have a little, I think it’s, I don’t know if there’s even an age range. There were all kinds of ages there. So, I don’t know that it’s from two to six. It could be if you have a newborn all the way up to a teenager for all I know, so I don’t know, but go to their website.

They do retreats in the Catskills, in Cape Cod. They’re thinking of doing a winter one somewhere so that would be really cool. But if you are interested at all in a mommy and me luxury glamping trip, it was a really great experience for me.

Okay, have an amazing week. I will talk to you next week. Bye bye.

Hey, if you’re ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2k for 2k program where you’re going to make your first $2,000 the hardest part using my simple 5 step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.