Nicki is a women’s empowerment coach and the owner of Sunflowers In Sunshowers, a company that focuses on helping women flourish through holistic and transformational life coaching. She is passionate about the work she is doing to help women love themselves wholly and live their life more fully. After experiencing a “quarter life crisis”—she struggled with her identity, life direction and overall life satisfaction—this was her awakening. She began a healing journey of self-discovery and uncovering which led to dismantle her pre-conceived beliefs and re-define not only herself but her vision of “the good life”. This journey eventually led her to realize her calling as a life coach and pursue a certification as a life and health coach. Her mission is to help women heal from their past conditioning and misunderstandings so that they can uncover their authentic selves, step into their power and create their vision of “the good life” too. To date, she has had the privilege of helping women all over the world from London, England to Portland Oregon.
Nicki Brown, Women's Empowerment Coach
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
I’m Nicki, I’m an achiever, recovering people pleaser and highly sensitive person, wife, and mom of two. I’m also a Holistic and Transformational Life Coach for women. It’s probably no surprise I’m a lover of sunflowers and nature. I’m into all things that some people might consider “woo” — astrology, crystals, oracle reading. I’m an extroverted introvert, I love people but deeply need and value time to myself. I’m dedicated to growth and I’m an avid learner and lover of life and travel, who’s keen to experience everything life has to offer. I’m always happy for recommendations on new books or experiences, and I’m always game to try new foods.
What is your business name and how do you help your clients?
Sunflowers In Sunshowers offers Life Coaching to Women who have gotten to the point in their life where they feel like something needs to change, or they’re in a transitionary period in life and they're feeling lost, stuck, dissatisfied, overwhelmed, stressed out, burnt out and/or disconnected from themselves and their life. I like to say what I actually do is help women create the freedom to flourish—I help them live their vision of the good life, one that feels aligned, authentic, connected, passionate and deeply fulfilling. When you set out on a journey of self-discovery or to create your vision of the good life, you’ve embarked on a lifelong journey. I’m here to support my clients in getting crystal clear on what that vision and desire looks like for them, and to unapologetically claim that for themselves. I’m here to assist them in cultivating presence, awareness and other tools and resources to support them on that journey. I’m here to create a safe and supportive space for them to explore their thoughts, feeling, beliefs, past and patterns without fear, shame or judgment. I’m here to ask them insightful questions that pull out their own deeper knowledge and help them develop trust in their intuition. I’m also here to hold up a mirror…to help them see themselves more clearly—as capable and empowered, and whole and worthy. I tell all my clients, I’m not the expert, you are— I can give you the tools, guide you, support you, and encourage you but ultimately you are the only person who can possibly be the expert of you.
Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
I think the pivotal moment for me was really this sense of having a quarter-life crisis. It was like I woke up one day with this feeling of…how did I get here? I felt a bit like I’d been sleepwalking through my life on auto-pilot and I had this overall sense of disconnection from myself and from my life and also in some sense, dissatisfaction. I had this realization that I had done all the things I was “supposed” to do, I had a good job, I bought a house, I got married, and I had a child but nothing felt the way I thought it should. It wasn’t what I had imagined for myself. I was living with this sense of feeling constantly overwhelmed and underwhelmed all at once. I knew that something had to change because I was starting to feel like I didn’t really recognize myself.
I felt deep down that there was something missing in my life, something more I wanted or needed to make my life feel complete. I started on this bit of a personal development journey and at first I was convinced that it was my job that was making me miserable because it’s not what I had imagined doing. I had taken International Development in school and had dreamed of working for the UN or working with Non-profits—my heart had always known that I wanted to do something where I felt like I was making a difference. In my early 20s I signed up for an internship in a rural and remote part of Kenya and soon after arriving, I found myself in a position I wasn’t prepared for, so I came home early and in need of a job I fell backward into a job in the tech space as sort of a stop-gap thinking I’d take some time to figure out my next move and then get back into the non-profit space, but I never did. So I began job hunting, and I interviewed with a great tech company that worked in education and I thought maybe I could marry my skills with something a little closer to my heart. The job was for a sales manager position that would be in charge of coaching an inside sales team, they were looking for someone with strong coaching skills and while I didn’t have the experience I was a natural. I flew through the process, they offered me the job, sent through the offer paperwork and they were so sure I was going to take it that they sent me a congratulatory gift—it arrived before I even got home that night. But I got scared. I didn’t think I was capable. It was so far out of my comfort zone and I started questioning whether I had what it took to manage people and whether I would fail. Ultimately I couldn’t leave my safe and secure job. Ironically, that book was called mindset by Carol Dweck. After reading that book I realized that my mindset ‒ all my conditioned beliefs about myself was one of the biggest things that kept me from taking that job. Shortly after reading that book and diving deeper into my own personal development, I came across the concept of life coaching—I couldn’t believe I had never heard of it. It seemed to be like I was made to be a coach—so I did some research, got certified and the rest is history.
What are your current goals for your business?
My goal for my business is actually quite humble, I realized that when I released all the pressure for myself and my business to do and achieve certain things, I found a deeper level of freedom and satisfaction in my work, so my goals for my business are quite humble, they’re for me to continue to invest in myself and my business—I just want to continue to lead by example and do my own work, so that I can pour more of that into my business, always seeking to optimize to better serve my clients, and then deeply serve as many women as possible. I’ve recognized a need to meet people where they are and so I’m working on diversifying my offers and innovating them in such a way that I can still give the most value but at any price point because I never want cost to be something that prevents people from getting the support they need. And finally, I desire to continue to serve women internationally, and my hope is for my work to make a lasting global impact but I’ve released an attachment to what I think that should look like, because I know in my heart that by doing the work I do, that for every 1 person I serve, there is a ripple effect of that change, by helping even one person heal and be their best, we’re helping the world as a whole inch closer to that same goal.
What would you like to achieve for yourself and your business in the future?
As an achiever, this may shock you, but what I’d like to achieve for myself and my business in the future is presence, trust and acceptance. What do I mean by that? By presence I mean, allowing myself and my business to be exactly where they are right now, to be more focused on what I can do today than what things might look like in the future, and not allowing what happened in the past to bring up fear and patterns that impact my present behaviour and decisions. By acceptance, I mean letting go of any shame or disappointment around mistakes and what I did or did not do, and what I have or have not achieved. I mean fully loving and accepting myself and my business exactly as we are right now, without agenda or pressure or expectation. Letting go of the need for myself or my business to be anything other than what it is. And then by the trust I mean trusting myself and my intuition, both personally and professionally. I’ve had a tendency to doubt my decisions and agonize over whether they would create the results I want but going back to presence and acceptance, if I release those pressures and expectations then I’m better able to trust because I know that I can be with and love myself and my business no matter the outcome. We’re both growing and changing all the time so there will be fears and pain and failure and losses and I can trust life…that even when things aren’t okay, they will be eventually and trust that we are resilient and we can overcome anything. So these are my goals, they’re what I’ve been working on in both my life and my business for the past year and the truth is that that kind of work is never done, it’s a continual effort to maintain that, and so I try to consciously keep them as goals.
Who inspires you to be the best that you can be?
I wouldn’t say there is any one person, but rather many. Of course, my kids inspire me, as well as my clients and the people around me because I know that I’m leading by example and I want to show them what’s possible. I also want to be able to be there for them and help them with whatever they’re going through and ultimately help them be their best and that requires me to be at mine too because I’m not able to do that as well if I’m not.
What is your work inspired by?
My work is inspired by all the teachers and masters that came before me and whom I’ve had the pleasure of learning from whether through their programs, or through their books and works that they’ve put out into the world. I’m also inspired by the potential of the coaching industry as a whole because I’m also inspired by a vision I’m long held for a better world and I think coaching has the power to do this. Coaching can help you heal intergenerational trauma, and learn how to be a better spouse and a better parent to your children and so on…it can also encourage people to chase their dreams, and fulfill their purpose. I deeply believe in the power of coaching on so many levels.
However, it’s our duty to be in integrity and to be the kind of leaders who embody the work, who, as I’ve said before, lead by example so that we show the next person and they show the next people and so on. I think we often forget about the power of one—of the individual. The more a person heals themselves, the more they work to rewire and decondition their beliefs, the more they develop awareness, presence, compassion and understanding, the better they become at managing their stress, feeling their emotions, opening their hearts and regulating their nervous system, the better they feel in themselves and the better they are to the people and the world around them. And the better role model they are for younger generations. The more each of us embodies the work and embodies the changes in ourselves the better our future will be.
If you could change one thing about your industry, what would it be and why?
I think if I could change one thing about the coaching industry then it would be the ethics in marketing. I think a lot of coaches, “experts” and especially the business gurus and the ones who have really “made it” will market and sell their programs and services selling growth and personal and professional development like it’s “fast”, “simple” and “easy” —the 5 step process, the blueprint for, the silver bullet solution…even my first coaching program had a marketing element to it and that’s how they told me to sell my services because that’s what sells. They tell you to sell people what they want and give them what they need, and sure it works, that’s how it’s been done for years but a lot of people enter into these dynamics which false expectations and when they struggle or find that things are rarely so fast, simple or easy they wind up thinking it’s their fault, and something is wrong with them and I hate that because it leaves them disillusioned believing that what they want is simply not meant for or not attainable for them.
It does work for some people but they are the exception, they might just happen to have that perfect combination of things working in their favour: the right circumstances, the right foundation, the right motivation, the right support, a deep level of commitment and a sprinkle of “luck”. Most people don’t have all that working in their favour, and or they might be getting support in a certain area but they don’t realize that it’s a symptom of a much larger pattern or problem. What I’m saying is that for most people, things are much more complex, every aspect of our lives is deeply interrelated so there are layers to pull back and work through. There’s also level of commitment that is involved and you need to do the work to get the results but one size fits all and quick band-aid fixes do little to address the root of the problem, which is what most people need to really achieve results and make lasting and sustainable changes. Nobody wants to hear it takes time or hard work. That’s not sexy or desirable.
When people are in pain, or they’re struggling or they’re going after something they really want—they want help fast. They want quick fixes. They want tall tales of how achieving x, y and z is as simple and fast as 1,2 3 and they want to hear that someone has shortcuts and secrets and fast tracks and if you can pay for it, you’ll get the results and that’s what gets them in the door. That’s not what I’m offering. Don’t get me wrong, we can help you get some quick wins but those are just small pieces of a larger puzzle and a longer-term commitment.
So I think there needs to be more honesty and transparency in how personal development and coaching services are marketed and I think we need to work towards realigning expectations of what is possible. And I believe my business struggled for so long because I refused to buy into the idea that this was the way I had to sell my services, it didn’t feel right to me, it didn’t feel in integrity, but I finally found a model that showed me there was another way, that it was possible to take a more soulful and heart centred and approach to marketing, and I’m so grateful for that.
