Transform Your Coaching Business with TreeMap – A Ten-Year Journey

Business as usual never made sense to me. When I realised that business could be done on behalf of Earth, I was inspired and started exploring how to work with trees as a way of doing business.

For the last ten years I’ve been developing and refining a tool that helped me to do business differently. The TreeMap is a complete tool that allows you to create a simple and clear visual plan for any business or project you undertake using a bio-inspired approach that models the growth of a tree from seed to fruit.

It helps you understand the relationships between each part of the business/project and how they function together so that you can:

• Gain clarity on what's important
• Know where to focus your attention
• Minimise confusion in communicating your plan to others
• Create the impact you're here to make

Then it allows you to weave a walk in the woods into the heart of how you run your business, leveraging your Natural Attraction towards specific parts of certain trees to gain additional insight and clarity on how to develop your business.

Creating a Coaching Business from the Beginning

The ICF highlights that 87% of coaching businesses fail within the first three years. That’s a scary statistic but not an unusual one when it comes to business. There is so much to learn about running a business that it can be overwhelming.

I can still remember the moment when I’d completed the coaching training I took nearly 15 years ago and realised that now I’d have to think about building a business. I’d been so focused on developing the art of coaching and figuring out how to weave nature into it that I hadn’t even considered what it would mean to have a coaching business.

The TreeMap is the tool I wish I’d had back then. Nature-based so that I could lean into a different way of doing business. Free and easy to use without too much confusing business language that I didn’t understand. A simple system that I could easily set that would allow me to continue to embody a nature coaching mindset while I started focusing on how to get coaching clients.

It’s the tool I continue to use today to develop and grow Earthself and it’s come a long way in ten years! Earthself’s TreeMap is now professionally designed. I have it printed out and pinned to the wall next to where I work. It helps remind me of the goal I’m working towards, how I’m going to do that and then the impact I want to create from this.

The TreeMap Trello Board

Over the years, the biggest challenge was finding out a way to manage the systems of the coaching business I had. I tried many different coaching business tools but they never really worked for me. Nature was missing.

I first started out like many other business owners, using spreadsheets to try to capture action and progress. These early sheets were messy and confusing for myself and others I worked with as they combined reflections and actions.

After trying many different systems, I ended up creating my own template in a Trello board. It allowed me to put values first to help inform decisions and have easy visual access to the TreeMap before translating the seasonal approach and the living TreeGrowth into a rich visual tool.

While Earthself’s TreeMap operating system has become more complex as the organisation’s developed, I have a basic design specifically for coaches to manage clients that can be adapted to meet specific needs. After all, no one tree looks exactly like another…

Bringing it to Life Beyond Earthself

For the last year and a bit I’ve been working with Shift Bristol, an amazing community interest company bringing the TreeMap into their organisation and helping them set up their own TreeMap Operating System.

Laura Corfield , director of Shift Bristol says, “At a time when I felt overwhelmed and clueless about how to project manage a CIC and had lots to learn about self-care, connection to nature and how to build a resilient and regenerative business, Tabi’s coaching and the TreeMap has been instrumental to me and the organisation.”

Now, I’m running complementary online sessions to help others develop their own TreeMap. Behind the workshop sits an entire training series that people can access at now cost. Not only am I delivering a workshop for Shifties (people who have taken part in Shift Bristol’s year long sustainability programme) but I’m also partnering with The RSA too to deliver a workshop on Thursday 3rd October. If you’d like to join you can find more information here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/earthselfs-treemap-tickets-944172915607

Complimentary Access to All

I could easily start commercialising this but it feels wrong to do so. We’re at a critical point in human’s history where we have to align with Earth’s intelligence as quickly as possible if we’re to ensure the survival of our own species and the many others who inhabit Earth.

What’s more interesting for me is enabling as many people as possible who are interested in creating nature-based / regenerative businesses to have access to this tool. That’s why TreeMap has a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence.

Plus it’s just another way I can give freely with no expectation of return. Just like a tree does when it releases its seeds :)

If you’d like to explore the TreeMap for your own coaching business/project you can access the online training space here: https://treemap.sutra.co

And if you’re part of a community that would benefit from a TreeMap workshop, get in touch with me. I run 1-2 community workshops each season.

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Earthself’s L1 NatureProcess Coach Training Programme is an ICF accredited training programme that’s designed to help you master the art of coaching with and as nature outdoors, indoors and online in a way that’s neuro inclusive while your investment helps develop a Scottish community food forest.

Next cohort starts Autumn, October 2nd with further intakes every season. Get in touch if you like to explore if the programme is right for you…