 Today, I'm happy to be here with Carrie Lee, and she is an intentional creativity coach. I'll let Carrie, I'll let you introduce yourself, but I just want to say that you have been, what a wonderful memory you've been in our MasterHeart business mentoring community of other self-employed professionals, and you've really made good use of the community by getting to know others and finding ways to collaborate, which I know you're going to talk about. In this video, I'm going to, Carrie, I'm going to have you share some of the lessons you've learned in taking your business from in-person events, mostly, and some corporate consulting, to now you are able to provide services and programs online, virtually, maybe in a way that you maybe have surprised you in the past, but anyway, looking forward to this conversation, Carrie, I'll start with anything you want to say about your work, like who's it for? Yeah, so what I do basically is help people with self-discovery, and my sweet thought seems to be typically the woman, or could be the man, who has gone through a lot of life and says it's my turn, and I need to discover more about myself. There's got to be more to this experience of life that I've been in a treadmill sort of situation. So wanting more clarity, wanting more inspiration, more confidence even, and then feeling free in that, in being in their own flow is basically how I put it. Yeah, well said. And so before, walk us through like the before and after and what you learned along the way. So before the in-person events was mostly what you did, and just for a lot of people watching this or listening, maybe they are currently, or they used to before the pandemic, do a lot of their business in person, and a lot of people are wondering, gosh, can I bring it online? Is it possible? Yeah. But yeah, tell us about that. Yeah. Well, 12 years ago, I really made a huge change in my life. I didn't want to do the type of work I was doing anymore, like many of us with this story. I really wanted to express myself artistically and do what I felt was for the greater good, you know, help other people in some way. So it's been this unpeeling or this step-by-step journey. But when the pandemic hit, I was doing corporate team building and working with school teachers and school administrators, primarily on resilience building workshops using creativity as a process. When Shelter at Home hit, all gone, all of it, right? And I had been thinking about going online for years, but for whatever reason hadn't jumped that hurdle. So with some pause of, okay, what's next? I realized that the work that I had been doing the previous, well, six or seven years, I was creating the content of different kinds of workshops and learnings and projects that I could put together to create a bigger program. And when you and I met, we weren't sure if I fit in your group because I did in-person events and I worked with corporate and it wasn't really the model, but I was so resonated with who you are and how you approach business and also the complimentary ways that you do things that I don't, that I wanted to learn from. And so I was set up perfectly to be able to make that transition because of your group really. But what happened is in January of that year, so before Shelter at Home, a couple of people actually came to me and asked for individual coaching. So there's the sign, right, that, oh, maybe I'm supposed to go this way. And then when Shelter at Home hit, we had to pause because we couldn't meet anymore. It was at my studio, but in the meantime, that's when I realized the puzzle pieces were there. And some of the puzzle- Now before we go further, I want to ask you about the, that initial, those initial inquiries. Yeah. People coming to you. I mean, that sounds, that sounds wonderful, but you must have done something to inspire those inquiries. It's not, I mean, if, if, if nobody knew you or coach, they wouldn't have asked you. So, so tell, tell us about that process. Like how did you? Yeah. Very valid question. So I've been doing this work full-time since 2015, but doing it since 2013. So we're now five years into it. So I've given a lot of public workshops as well. So it was at, I told everybody. I really felt the energy of leaving these public workshops. I knew I needed to do something different, but I didn't know what it was. And I very much, I walk my talk in terms of how I make decisions and kind of go into the unknown. And so I told people I was going to do my last workshops the end of 2019 and the first week of 2020. Yeah. I had nothing on my calendar, which is kind of insane logically, but going into the pandemic that really helped me because I didn't have a lot to undo or re-figure out. So what happened is at this last workshop, this woman came up to me and she said, are you ready to do individual coaching with me? I've been asking you for two years. And I was like, do you've been asking for two years? I didn't hear her. I was thinking the group thing, you know, I don't do one-on-one. I do the group thing for whatever reason. I didn't hear her. So of course I was primed and like, yes, I would love to work with you one-to-one. And that started it. And then she immediately referred into two more people just a couple of weeks later and all of a sudden I'm off and running with individual coaching program, which were 14-week programs. Yeah. So the lesson I'm getting from this is that you've really nurtured a warm audience. You could say that's a small warm audience. We can talk about your email subscriber list and everything. But it's like you've nurtured this very warm audience through doing your workshops, which for the folks who are watching this, like you could, yes, some of you may have been doing in-person workshops, but some of you may be doing online workshops. Either way, it's a very, very warm audience, people who have experienced your work in a group setting. And naturally, now some people are going from one-to-one to group. Some people are going from group to one-to-one. You happen to be doing from group to one-to-one. But either way, it's like whatever audience or clients or students or participants we have, they are often open to a different format of working with us. I mean, that's really the big aha moment here, right? It's like, okay, you've been doing groups. Maybe they're open to one-to-one. And in fact, they've been asking, one person's been asking you, but it's like even more of them might be open to one-to-one. And then people who are doing one-to-one right now, some of those clients may be open to doing group experience. Anyway, so it's really great that you were now, you're now doing that. You're now open to do the one-to-one. And you also have groups, too. So you have kind of both. And so, all right, so continue your journey now. And how do you, when did you proceed now through 2020? Yeah, and so actually I have morphed on back to groups, but online. So they were the catalyst for this, really. Yes, yes. And you're right, I was nurturing it. But one of the things I've done right all these years, because I never had a destination. I didn't really know what I was doing. I just knew I didn't want to do what I had done before. And I wanted to experience my own life differently. And I knew I'm probably going to work, and I want to work for a long time. So I followed my own joy, number one, and gratitude, right? And that was really what led me. And it felt fun. I had some three words that I followed. Ease, meaning I felt like I was swimming downstream. Abundance or prosperity, meaning I'm getting what I need. But also the client is. And really three people often, because I often pull in other collaborators. So everyone who's involved needs to get whatever they want out of it. So super, super conscious of that energy exchange, I'll call it. And then the last one was it needed to be fun. I had done enough things in my life that didn't feel fun that I wasn't going to do anymore, which felt like a huge declaration coming from a corporate environment that was not fun for me. So following those three things, everything I created was in alignment with my own authenticity. Because I was interested in it, I could speak about it from the heart. And so I created this body of work that naturally intertwined with each other, like a puzzle piece, not knowing I was doing that until later I could see how they all linked together because I just kept true to myself. Yes, yes. And then this is also one of the kind of lessons I love to bring forth whenever possible is, well, you are a multi-passionate person. I mean, you are multi-talented. You are, some people call it multi-potentialite. And anyway, the idea is that it's not, you don't just have one very narrow skill that you offer. You have multiple. And a lot of those who are listening to this also have multiple skills and interests that they have. And what you were open and willing to is just to try different things over the years. And then now you are finding a creative way to weave them all together. And I love that because that's really what makes your work unique. Because the weaving together has a combination that nobody else has or at least very, very, very few people have. And of course now that you bring it online, that's even more unique. So tell us a couple of the threads that you're kind of weaving together. Yeah. Well, what happened then is in your group, when Shelter at Home hit, and I had to pause with these new clients I had, I realized there were some great complementary methods of self-discovery that I could tap into. And that was Liesl with strengths and talents and also her tapping. And then also human design with Sandy Frieschi. So those were different methods of self-discovery. Art is the process that we use to metabolize it, I'm gonna call it, right? It's not really about being, it's not at all about being an artist. It's about using the art as the process. So that, and then another method of someone I admit years before, who we knew we were gonna collaborate at some place at some point, created this beautiful ease-filled but five-month sequence of self-discovery that's extremely, I'll call it holistic. It's like getting an MRI of yourself in ways you've never understood yourself versus like little x-ray pieces. And it blew me away. It's like, if I knew this information when I was 30 years ago, life would have been different. But of course I don't really want life to be different because I like what's happened now. But you're right, it's completely unique and individual. And what I also realized for myself is I always declared that I had what I call the creative, 35-year case of creative constipation. And as an artist, right? That's not a good thing. But I had this very long period in my life where I couldn't create on my own, put a canvas or a piece of paper in front of me and I would freeze. I wouldn't know what to do. It broke through that, this intentional creativity method broke through that one because you cannot make a mistake. So the perfectionist gets to leave the room because there is no perfection and that there's actually beauty and information in those quote mistakes. But the other thing that I learned is that one of my strengths is I am full of ideas. I have endless ideas. I don't need to do them all. I finally realized I don't need to do all the ideas. It can be overwhelming. But I also don't come up with the ideas on my own. I get my ideas from inspiration outside of myself. So this is some of the insight I got for myself through these different processes that weave together. And so collaboration for me is ideal because someone else can provide their content and then I can do a creative process or a project around that. And it helps whoever's using it learn it in a completely different way, kinesthetic, fun, introspective than they would have done otherwise. So yeah, it's beautiful. And collaboration is a skill to build. It's not like we're, yeah, we're not really, I don't think we're really born or even trained through school or even in companies to collaborate all that well. And so that's something you're learning right now. Do you wanna share anything? Because I know a lot of people listening to this have probably tried collaboration and because it's a skill to learn it's not something that comes naturally. Or I should say skillful collaboration doesn't come naturally. It takes work to learn how our roles are and how do we work through potential conflict and find, like you said, abundance, truly a win-win all around. So anything you wanna share from your journey of collaboration that others might find benefiting? Yeah, I've had successes and failures, definitely on all of those. I've put a lot of effort into the failures. And I think at this point, because absolutely the ones I'm collaborating with now are hugely successful in terms of that everyone is happy. And I think it really, yeah. And I think it comes down to that conversation in the very, very beginning of it as what do you wanna get out of this? Like how will you fulfill its success a year from now, five years from now, whatever? Talking about an exit path as well, just like any business dealing, also if it doesn't work, how do you want to exit it versus hard feelings you can't talk about or whatever? And a lot of it honestly is going with, it's been gut instinct for me. And just seeing another one of my strengths again is the connectedness. I can see links between things that may not be obvious. And so I could see how these three methods, the way I put it is like if you're in a relay race and each of the guides are one of the runners and we're passing the baton to each other, there's that handoff and there's that much crossover in the information and then it's all new information. So I could see that. So that's important is how, where's everybody's part in the collaboration? I mean, so much of it is just trying to think forward in the beginning and talk about every possible scenario. And then there's way more to it than that. I mean, it's like, do your energy rhythms work together? Do you, is one of the better executing versus ideas? There's really, it's complicated. It really is. Yeah, totally, it is, it is. And yeah, I mean, and year by year, you learn the important lessons, energy exchange, the roles that are being played, the structures of helpful conversations or whatever. I mean, you learn these year by year and then it just gets better and better. So it's really great that you were willing to bring the colleagues in to create something really beautiful and profound. So let's talk a bit about two more things. And then we'll go, one is the process of bringing your work online, given that you were so used to doing in-person stuff. How has that been? What have you learned about that? Yeah, yeah. Actually, I wanna go back to just a second on the networking because there is something that I think is a value that if somebody's not used to it. Early in my career, I was in sales. And so I would have to go to a lot of networking events just to meet random potential clients or partners, you know, in referral partners, whatever. And I learned a method that I think is invaluable. And that is back in the days when you had business cards and you were meeting in person, you would go up to a person, you would ask them a couple of questions about them and write it on the back of their business card. You wouldn't say anything about yourself and what you had to sell. It was not a selling opportunity, it was a gathering information opportunity. And then following up afterwards with those who resonated for whatever reason. I could often tell by their response, did they ask me any questions? How did they respond to my follow-up email, whether they were a potentially good collaborator or not? Or was it all the spotlight on them, right? Or did they also wanna share? So that was a good early life lesson in terms of just understanding the dynamics of collaboration. That's really good, really good. So yeah, let's talk about it now. Now you're bringing it online. Yeah, it was hard. Is that possible? Yeah, it was okay. It was so hard. Okay, all right. It was so hard. For me, it was hard because my strengths are not in the execution. You know this about me, George, they're not in the execution. I'm a visionary and I stay on the front of the wave and that follow-up stuff is much harder for me. And so I actually signed myself up for a three-month program that just happened to come around last March. And honestly, it was intense. It made a lot of people sick. It was so intense, like they couldn't keep up with the pace, but I knew it was the only way for me. And I can be super intense. So I can for three months be on that ride. I don't necessarily agree with all of the methods that I learned, but it gave me deadlines and enough step by step. And I had nothing else. Like I had to do it. The time was here. If I was gonna stay in the role I wanted to stay in and not go back to a job that I didn't want. So I had a huge motivation behind me. And in some ways, maybe it wasn't as hard as I'm saying it was, but for me, it just felt like a really big step. Luckily I had a lot of the things already in place somewhat and I had the audience in place already. So it wasn't that hard. It was just more the logistics of it all, but it's totally doable. I mean, it's totally doable. Like what's one tool that you started using that you hadn't been using before, let's say? Zoom. Right, okay, yeah. Right, so it's like, how am I gonna, so I used to be in a setting in also a classroom or a conference room setting where people have art supplies in front of them. And I can see their process and where they're at in the art supplies. I can feel the vibe or the energy of the room. And now all of a sudden I'm behind a screen. I can't see what everyone's doing. So that was a huge shift for me. I learned from myself to, I have a camera that I use my cell phone, a camera stand and it's over my work station. So I use that to demo. And I have to ask people to please participate and show me their work and give me feedback because I need it to be able to judge where to go next. And people have been great about that. I mean, this is a time where I call it a lot of grace for midlife firsts, or people can make a lot of mistakes because we didn't know it was all new. So I would just say just technology in general of communication was the big one. And then of course getting over my own mental, not block, but comfort of being on a camera and talking. And I'm fine in front of a room, but it just felt different talking to a screen. Yeah, talking specifically to the little camera lens. That's like a little, like I can, I think of it as, sort of the eye or the heart and the soul of the ideal viewer, kind of feeling into that. And right now I'm talking to the camera lens. So yeah, it's definitely a skill to build. And once you build that skill, now of course it feels so natural for me to do it. And of course for you, it's increasingly natural as well. So but it wasn't natural until it became natural through practice. Yeah, and what I do now, and maybe you told me this, I don't remember, is I make the screen really small and push everybody's pictures way up to the top so that I can at least connect by looking at the faces, whether I can see them super well or not. Right, exactly, no, that's exactly right. That's what I do as well, except in interview situations like this, I actually, I have to keep you relatively large when I talk and look at the camera lens. Anyway, so maybe last thing is, let's talk a bit about what you learned in enrolling the clients into your program. Any tips you could offer to those who are also enrolling people into kind of multi-month programs? Yeah, well, I'm definitely in the learning process still of that, the initial ones came super easy. They actually had been asking for this kind of thing. They were ready, especially with the shelter at home, they were ready for this. They actually stay asked to stay, and I created a next level program for them. So that was my, as I say, the low hanging fruit, in which I really don't wanna call them that because they're not, they're my high fruit, if you know what I mean. But so now it's really been what you teach about that consistency and upping my reach and my marketing, and so I'm working on that. That doesn't come so natural to me. I'm just trying to share more of my day to day life because I literally live my work. So just letting the Gregorius Hermit show herself more and show what I'm doing more is really what I'm doing. And I've got some help. So I needed that. I've got some marketing help now to help push me along and guide me. And I don't know, I seem to thrive better on the collaboration. So really realizing that. Yeah, for sure. That's really good. Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing all that, your journey and the lessons that are encouraging for those who are watching and listening. So that's just complete by sharing a bit more about what's coming up in terms of your offers or anything you wanna share. Yeah, yeah. So the self-discoverywisdomschool.com is my program and there's a lot of information on the website. The next one we'll start in a couple of months, the next session. In the meantime, I am working on some smaller one-off classes or courses. One is a collaboration with Sandy. So look for those coming up soon. And that's sort of what I'm figuring out now is the middle ground. Oh, also on Wednesdays. And right now it's gonna be through June. I don't know how long it will go. I'm doing a create with Kerry Lee open studio session. And it's free. It's my version of a co-working session. And it was so that I would have accountability to myself for creative time that wasn't work related. So it's two hours every Wednesday. And I invite anyone to come along. Any definition of creativity works. It can be writing, singing, cooking, house project, painting. I mean, it can be research. It can be any form of creativity, really. And that's on the website as well. But it's kerryleart.com forward slash create. Well, yeah. And I'll be sure to have the links below. So thank you so much, Kerry. Thank you. For your work, the way you do it. People are lucky. People in your circle are lucky to have you. Thank you, George. I feel the same about you. Thank you so much. All right. All right. Thank you.