Meet ModernWell Coworking Member, Casie Kindl
Meet ModernWell-er Casie Kindl, CEO and Founder of Kindl Coaching. Casie has been a part of the Minneapolis coworking community at ModernWell since June 2022.
From the Institute of Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC) Casie is a Certified Professional Coach (CPC) and Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner (ELI-MP). With an emphasis on well-being and leadership she supports the Minneapolis community through a variety of services including 1:1 coaching, group coaching, and her new series hosted monthly at ModernWell, Age of Beauty. Casie walks us through her personal journey with therapy and coaching, her path to creating Kindl Coaching, service offerings, and her vision for the future.
Casie, tell us about your journey to creating Kindl Coaching.
I worked in the medical device industry for 21 years, but got into it for money and status, due to an at-the-time unrecognized feeling that I needed to be “successful” and financially secure to be okay. After achieving much “success” in this space, I realized it wasn’t filling me up. I also faced a series of health issues that I was struggling with because I was so out of alignment with who I was. This marked the beginning of my personal journey to seek help from professionals in order to feel more complete.
I started with an amazing therapist, then found my way to a functional medicine practitioner, clinical nutritionist, energy healer, and eventually coaches to help me through it. I also started consuming podcasts and books on self help. Through all of these amazing professionals, I learned common threads of insight that made me feel happier, fulfilled, and complete. This was a light-bulb moment for me. In recognizing I had been so blessed to receive the support and guidance from these professionals, it was time to give back – to support other women in their journeys to feeling better in their lives.
After attending coaching school last year, I finally had enough courage to start Kindl Coaching. Many women operate in a default mode of doing what others expect of us, or what they value, without clarity on what matters most to us. Now, I get to help women uncover what they value most, how and why they show up in certain ways in their lives, and use that knowledge to move forward on a more aligned, empowered path.
There’s been conversations happening in recent years about the stigma of seeking professional help. People are resonating with the need to be in alignment with themselves. What was the experience like for you to say you were ready to seek professional help?
At first I was resistant as hell. It was my husband who started going to therapy first. I was so focused on doing, doing, doing in my career and at home. We were going in separate directions and drifting apart in our marriage. I didn’t even realize it. He started seeking therapy and he asked me a few different times in a few different ways, “what would you think about going to see a therapist” and I would say, “nope, I’m good. Things are fine. I don’t think I really need it.”
Once I started seeing and unpacking things in my own life, I realized “oh my God, there is a lot of shit here.” I worked my way through the first couple real struggles and started realizing that there is a little bit more light at the end of the tunnel. I began to feel hopeful each step of the way after going through a lull. It fueled me to keep going, so then it wasn’t as hard to seek out services and help from others because I saw the benefit of it in my own life. I was excited to keep learning and growing.
Do you feel like you see the same initial resistance from your own clients or people who are just starting on their journeys?
Yes, one hundred percent. The biggest challenge I see people face is they know on some level that there’s something missing in their lives. They want something more and the first step is admitting that. The second is valuing yourself enough to want to invest and trusting that there is a better way. Another challenge my clients run into is they feel like there is no time. I felt that too – life is busy, it’s going a million miles an hour. How could I possibly fit this in on top of work, being a mom, hustling kids everywhere, just life in general?
What’s interesting about that is, making that time to invest in yourself and trusting in a professional to help guide you on that path actually creates more time. You learn how to be more present in your own life, which can allow time to slow down and allow you to better enjoy what you’re experiencing. There is a reluctance for a lot of people to admit that there is a need, and to take the appropriate steps to invest the time and money in themselves to get to the next level.
Tell me more about the services you offer through Kindl Coaching and what the investment in yourself can look like.
I first want to highlight the building body of evidence that wellness includes so much more than being physically or nutritionally “well” that we have long accepted as important. Well-being also encompasses our emotional, mental, and spiritual needs. This realization is driving more demand to find a trusted partner on one’s journey toward complete well-being.
At Kindl Coaching, we offer 1:1 executive coaching for women wanting a very personalized service. Over the course of 6 months, clients complete an energy assessment, which reveals how they are showing up in their lives, and how they are perceiving their life and their reality. We also uncover their top values and relative “balance” or lack thereof. From there, we co-create a personalized journey.
My job as a coach is to support clients in uncovering their inner strength and knowledge within. I accomplish this by asking questions to elicit knowledge that’s already there, but gets lost in the chaos of life. At the end of our 6 months, clients take a second energy assessment to quantify changes they made in our partnership together. They are significant, measurable, notable, and exactly align with the things we’ve worked on. It’s so fulfilling for me to be able to support women on that journey. I get to learn along with them by seeing their own strength and wisdom come through. I totally love that!
The second offering that is more affordable is group coaching. I run two programs a year called My Empowered Path, a 12-week coaching container of women who are ready for a mostly self guided curriculum. Group coaching is perfect for those who will be dedicated to taking the time, usually 1.5-2 hours per week, to do exercises and hold themselves accountable. Each week, topics ranging from how to manifest, to how to be happier, are sent to their inbox via a video tutorial and a workbook of exercises to complete over the course of that week. We meet bi weekly in a virtual setting as a group and talk about our learnings, things that have come up for us, struggles, and wins. This is a great way to commit to self growth in a more affordable and accessible way.
The third, we host at ModernWell! Age of Beauty is a free monthly series with the goal for women to feel fully beautiful through every age and stage of life. There are so many of us, myself included, who struggle with comparing ourselves to other women, to what we feel we should be, comparison to images we see on social media or marketing campaigns, or the long held beliefs and definitions of what it means to be or not be beautiful. Regardless of whether we’ve achieved that confidence and that sense of beauty in our lives, it’s often fleeting in the sense that whatever we’ve held onto it’s going to change as we age and as we face challenges with a diagnosis, chronic pain, or change in physical appearance. This change is inevitable.
Knowing this, how do we support women in our community in feeling beautiful, and whole at all ages and stages of life? Part of this is reframing what it means to be beautiful. Some of it is mindset work on how we look at more of our inner radiance and how we step into our truth, and own who we are in an empowering and uplifting way.
As women, there are also endless beauty trends we get to enjoy. Age of Beauty covers that too, from creating healthy hair growth knowing there could be loss as we face menopause or perimenopause, to metabolic changes, latest makeup trends, or dermatology offerings that can help support us.
Age of Beauty is a balance of the external stuff that we get to enjoy as women and the internal stuff that we get to shift in order to feel supported by other women in our community as we face the inevitable – aging and changing throughout our lives.
What does the future look like for Kindl Coaching? How would you like to see the business grow?
What’s next for Kindl Coaching is having enough clients and having a big enough impact through our foundation, EmpowerHER (I haven’t started yet, but will!) to send at least 1 woman per year to iPEC, the program I attended, to earn her coaching certification and start positively impacting her own community. Ten percent of all top-line revenue is donated to EmpowerHer, to support this scholarship fund for women who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to get their licensing as a coach. If they then need a space or place to start their businesses, my vision is to have Kindl Coaching be a launching ground for them. My long-term vision for Kindl Coaching is for us, through an amazing team of coaches, to be able to support anyone and everyone who wants to invest in themselves to get to the next level.
In talking about the future of Kindl Coaching you touched on a shared value of ModernWell, diversity, equity, and inclusion. By seeking ways to make your services accessible to folks of varying socioeconomic backgrounds or by supporting women through the education process to become a coach themselves. How are these values in practice at Kindl Coaching?
It’s a great question. The way we fit it in so far and I’m trusting this will grow over time, is to have services at different price points so that it is achievable for anyone to gain some of what Kindl Coaching has to offer. Also, EmpowHER will provide scholarship funds for women, otherwise unable to afford it, to attend iPEC, so they can then support and uplift their communities, either in partnership with Kindl Coaching or by starting their own businesses.
What do you love about ModernWell?
I didn’t realize how important a sense of community was for me in my prior career until I didn’t have it. I came here for the community, but also found that I get a ton more accomplished. I am much more focused and creative, instead of bouncing from work mode to laundry to meal prep at home. All the stuff at home that is distracting! At ModernWell, I get time for myself, run into other entrepreneurs and business owners, and actually pause to eat lunch. Not cramming it in with other things around the house. Overall the community and creativity is what I love most.
Are you available and accepting new clients right now?
Yes! I am for all services.
When is the next offering for group coaching?
Starting September 10th, 2023. You can register here!
What conversations are up next for Age of Beauty?
Our September 7th event will be co hosted with Swapna Patel, local fashion stylist, Fabiana Peterson, local influencer, who is in her fifties and absolutely rocks it from a style standpoint, and Kate Moroney, an accomplished fashion stylist and director. All four of us will be in conversation about fall fashion trends, but also how to feel good with what you have in your closet, how to dress for your own personality. Pulling from what you have with a few new pieces and dress for you! Fabiana is also a brain health coach and she will be supporting us with some mindset work. Age of Beauty takes place monthly at ModernWell. You can RSVP to join the lunch hour conversations!
How can people access your services? Where do they find you?
You can connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, my website, or in person at ModernWell!