3 real creative coaching client examples — from 3 different industries

The Creative ProcessCoachingCreative Tools

5 Mar

Creativity coaching is not just for a certain type of creative person. By highlighting examples of 3 past coaching clients, you’ll be able to get a feeling for how useful creative coaching truly is, also for your creative project.

This blog post, and all other Creators Process blog posts are free from AI, and written by me. I share my opinions, knowledge, experience and typos with you gladly.

What I’m sharing here is nothing private about my past lovely clients. Our time together is sacred and private, and I’m actually quite protective of my clients.

I’m being vague about their profession and geographics, and I’m not revealing anything said in any session. Obvs.

I grow really fond of my clients, and am in their corner.

3 creative coaching client examples - from 3 different industries

These 3 particular women come from different parts of the world. They have different educations, jobs, and backgrounds.

Their private lives are different. They don’t share relationship or income status.

These are my 3 amazing coaching clients:

Client 1: American woman in the online teaching industry, writing fiction novels.

Client 2: European woman in healthcare, writing and illustrating a project on the side

Client 3: Canadian female artist, starting a business.

All those demographic, professional, and geographic details we’re told to nail in our “persona, muse, customer avatar” is not important at all in my creative coaching practice.

Even the creative projects they want my help with, are not the same. That goes for all my clients, and it’s one of the huge perks of my job as a creativity coach.

For a few weeks, I get a window into someone else’s world, through their creative passions, that lead to their projects. It’s a true thrill for me, and I learn much from all my clients and their processes. It enriches my life, that’s the truth.

What these 3 creative coaching clients have in common

What these clients (and all my clients) have in common, as well as being kind, smart, and creative women, is a wish for a human approach to creativity, and an understanding of just how personal their creative process is.

The main challenges was untangling ideas, thoughts, projects, information, what to focus on, and the feeling of overwhelm that comes from all those things.

Interestingly, lack of motivation was not an issue for any of them.

What I help most clients with is untangling overwhelm, and finding a way for personal structure that is doable and realistic in the long term. For them personally.

This is what is tripping us creators up. It is also what I struggle with myself, which is why I truly understand my clients and “see” them where they’re at.

Living a creative life - realistically

Yes, we have the same 24 hours in a day, and yes, we have a lot of say and power in how we spend our days, but that’s where the comparison stops.

We do not have the same amount of time available for creative projects, and we definitely don’t have the same amount of energy and resources available to us.

You can probably tell I feel passionate about this silly, and frankly patronizing, comparison to how much creative bandwidth we each have.

You might have read blogs or articles about quick fixes, winner morning rituals, exercise routines that will give you creative energy, and so on.

We are not living a filtered Instagram life, you and me, are we? This is real life with illness, kids, kids having problems, arguments, feeling like shite, house chores, people driving us up the wall, and all the little daily things that also make up a life.

And somehow, we have to fit a joyful creative project in there too.

This is what we bring to our creativity coaching sessions. Reality!

Coaching chair and desk in Creators Process Studio

How I help coaching clients untangle creative overwhelm

Creative coaching with me is mostly conversational. I ask you questions to get to you know and your projects, and I generally let you lead.

I like to add humor and lighthearted banter, if it’s appropriate. I find it’s easier to open up and share, if we’re comfortable in each others company.

There’s not a rigid process or plan I follow for each session, creativity doesn’t tend to like rigid very much. I have a loose agenda, always with room for exploring diversions.

Untangling creative overwhelm isn’t a one-solution-fits-all. For some clients, creative overwhelm can be because they are trying to do too many things at the same time.

You can work on several projects simultaneously, just not in the same moment, so it can be helpful to separate the projects, and make a realistic, personal plan for working on each one.

Creative overwhelm can also be linked to perfectionism, which is deeper rooted in a person. I am a recovering perfectionist, so I know this creative block all too well.

There’s also neurodiversity challenges that has a big impact on the ability to focus on one thing.

So you see, there cannot be one right way of creating, and go through a creative process. This is also why creative comparison is not possible. It’s just not a thing.

In our sessions, we hold space for life, we look for small joyful moments, we give ourselves permission to be playful and messy, and to make rubbish because it’s freeing.

We might make an accountability plan for our next coaching session, and we forgive and laugh whatever gets done, or doesn’t get done.

We leave pressure behind, and dive into the messiness of tangled ideas and notes, and somehow, we have breakthroughs. They always come unexpected, the breakthroughs, in their own time. But something shifts, and we build momentum from that.

The shifts can be subtle, actually they usually are, and we have to pay attention to catch them. That’s part of the magic of what a coaching session can do. We leave life behind for an hour, and make space for subtle shifts.

The tools I use for creating realistic and doable structure.

If you have read any other of my blog posts, or you’re on my newsletter (and if you’re not, I’d love you to), you’ll know I go on about using kaizen small steps and self-kindness as my main creative coaching tools.

There is no research that proves being hard on yourself makes you more creative. How you speak to yourself, and think of yourself, is impacting your energy and motivation for trying something, and being rubbish at it at first.

Self-kindness is love driven, and it’s a better creative motivator. I practice self-love personally daily, because my self-criticism can be off the chart, if I’m not keeping it in check. Remember, we’re being real here. There are no quick fixes, or “just be kind to yourself and you become super creative”.

We practice in small steps, and try over and over, and when things go wrong, we have our own backs, and I have yours, and we keep going.

I recommend Kristen Neffs data-driven work on self-compassion. Her book on self-compassion has been a big help in my own perfectionism-recovery.

Does your creative project need a little help?

You may have noticed I haven’t gone into specifics about what kind of business help we worked through with my Canadian artist client, or specifics about the other two clients.

Most of my clients are multi-passionate creative women with a business interest. Not all, but most. I can help with many aspects of starting a business, specifically business and brand clarity, building a simple UX and SEO friendly website, and Pinterest marketing.

That said, we tend to circle back to focusing on a sustainable process for creating that isn’t overwhelming, so there will be something to build a business from, you know?

Whether you live in Greenland, Kenya, Cannes or Alaska, if you’re creatively stuck on a project, and what you’ve read in this blog post resonates with you, feel free to reach out via my contact form here.