Wholehearted Business Coaching for Creatives, Coaches, & Course Creators Ready to Grow with the Power of Story
Untangle Your Ideas.
Unlock Your Growth.
Unleash Your Purpose.
And dang it, change is hard. Too many good ideas can get muddy oh so quickly.
You know that feeling when...
- You know you have some of the pieces but it feels like something is missing.
- You have all these good parts but are struggling hard to see how they fit together.
- You see a need for changing things up but aren't sure where to go.
- The things that used to fit well and feel like you, now feel like someone else's clothes.
Your Best Ideas Are Playing a Game of Twister & the Creative Dream You Love No Longer Feels Like It Fits
You've been doing this a while and Know your stuff but it seems like
Plus, It'd Be Really Great to Have Some Help Figuring Out How All the Pieces Come Together
You want to take your creative dream to the next level, but you just aren't sure what steps to take or how to get there.... which feels a LOT like being STUCK.
And the expert advice you've gotten... 🥴 Welp.
I've been there. So many times I decided to specialize in it
Either it lit up your creativity, but left you with even more great ideas and no clarity what to do with them.
Or it gave you so much strategy it shut you down and your creativity has checked out of the conversation...
But there is another way. You don't have to try to cut/paste your way out of overwhelm any longer.
My work has been
featured by:
What If... Your Creative Business is Actually a Work of Art?
And you didn't have to shave off parts of your creative self in the name of being business savvy or strategic?
Hi. I walked into my MBA-level accounting course day one and asked the professor if I could color the books instead of balancing them. 🙋🏻♀️ Instant teacher's favorite.
The truth is... It's not an either/or situation. You can do both. Artistry and strategy go hand-in-hand.
What They Don’t Tell You in MBA Land is...
is a unifying theme rooted in your lived experience that gives rise to a guiding metaphor and shapes how you show up in the world.
It becomes foundational to your business framework and anchors your purpose, giving you a path to grow aligned with your deeper why.
One reason you're tired and confused is you're trying to fit pieces of your story into strategy containers that were never meant to carry it.
It's time to stop doing that. There really is a much simpler way to bring it all together.
It's called your CoreStory. And it will change how you do business.
Your CoreStory
Stories Drive Strategy,
Not the Other Way Around.
I had no idea the depth of remarkable I would get with Michele. Her empathy, compassion, and genuine & honest approach has helped merge my expertise and my heart to create something that serves my clients AND fills my soul. It’s like she can see inside my head and my heart and pull out the pieces that I can quite recognize yet, or have maybe never dared to consider... I can’t believe this is the woman I got to work with. I am so grateful.
-Joanne, Financial Freedom/Business Coach
What if building your creative business is just as much a work of fine art as painting a masterpiece?
Even if you have never touched a paintbrush, if you are building your creative dream in the world— You are an artist.
No shade to spreadsheets, but creatives need sketchbooks to go with them.
Traditional business coaching can offer sound business insights based on standard business practices, but it is clueless about how to combine these in a way that honors & integrates your creativity and heart-centered intuition to unlock growth that sustains.
That's why I created Illustrated Business™. A one-of-a-kind coaching approach for creatives... that is both wholehearted and whole-brained.
That doesn't force you into someone's box or leave you hanging with very pretty jar of fairy dust at the end.
Here's the SECRET no one SPILLS.
You Need to Find the Focus That Moves You Forward & the Framework That Unleashes Your Growth
NOT One More Mass-Produced Strategy Worksheet
to get out of the quagmire and off the struggle bus
When you feel stuck
in business,
you don't need
copy & paste tactics
or more things
to vie for a spot
in your daily
top 3.
Because it doesn't matter how hard you work... if you're working at the wrong thing.
If creative business is a fine art, then your business plan
should feel like a sketchbook.
From My Heart to Yours. Throwing Spaghetti at the Wall Isn't a "Strategy" You Have Time For...
Trying to muscle your way through figuring it out won't just cost you time, it also costs the possibilities you are missing along the way.
...what could you be doing if you were confident in your next steps?
...how many people are NOT finding you that deeply need what you offer?
The DIY spaghetti toss method leaves you...
💻 Drained and deflated.
😩 Confused and questioning yourself.
⏰ Stuck in your head with no way out.
Add in all the voices, choices, and options around you... you're just not sure which ones you should pursue. Which one is really you.
And then there are things like 2025 economic🎢 rollercoaster rides.
You know you've grown and changed. That's a BEAUTIFUL thing. It's just the things that used to fit, now feel like someone else's clothes.
And even if you make something stick, that thing will never really feel as aligned and purposeful as you want it to.
In a way that flows out of your CoreStory and creative purpose. It helps if this person also:
...is a fun business coach that turns anxiety-inducing business homework into creative journaling exercises.
… skyrocketed her Instagram from 1K to 107K+ in under 2 years and grew her business using the exact same strategies you receive. (And, I made the mistakes so you don't have to!)
…has helped thousands of creatives break through their blocks , reconnect with their creativity, & find the paths that light them up.
... literally has her Masters degree studying organizational growth and change, and how to move the needle for creatives through story.
You’ll Walk Away With:
Six weekly, 1:1 coaching/strategy sessions complete with notes, transcripts, action items, and additional insights.
Curated and customized weekly homework from my original Illustrated Business™ exercises, tailored to your needs. Deep breath, these are FUN assignments that stretch you, but feel more like art/creative journaling, and that get you started business planning, the Illustrated Business™ way.
A custom challenge framework delivered as a Google doc ready for you to fill in the details— uniquely designed to help you build your audience on Instagram/socials, grow your email list, and connect your people with your core offers.
A Google Doc with all your call notes, exercises and feedback compiled in one place, along with your challenge framework. This gets delivered the week after our final call.
Welcome to My Signature, 6-Week, 1:1 Coaching Experience,
Illustrated Business™
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📄
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You Need Someone Who Specializes In Helping You Know How to Put the Pieces Together
more than a Traditional Business Coach or ALL-PURPOSE Strategist...
Where You Get the Focus, Framework, and Flow to Empower You In Turning Your Creative Business Into a Work of Art
Your business homework
could feel like this
💻
Six-weeks of direct, asynchronous Voxer chat access during our live coaching portion of the journey. So if you hit a homework bump, you have the support you need.
After our final call, you work on filling out the challenge and when you are finished, I take one more look over it. I make suggestions, add thoughts, and will walk-through my feedback with you via a Loom Video you can download and keep for reference.
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The confidence and courage that comes from feeling deeply supported, having the clarity of knowing your next steps, and the joy of having business resources that support you strategically AND creatively.
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It's Time To Step Into the More You're Made For
Because This Isn't Business as Usual. This is Business Coaching That Has the Brains of a Strategist
& the Soul of an Artist.
I got my Masters degree in studying the power of metaphor to effect change and transformation in leaders and organizations.
The stories we tell ourselves and one another literally generate our experience of the world around us. I've now translated my studies and 30 years of experience into my one-of-a-kind, signature coaching approach especially for creatives ⬇️
As a Creative, You Deserve a Coaching Experience That Is Specifically Built for the Ways You Learn and Experience the World.
Coaching that is undergirded with grad-school-level academic research, immersed in beauty and wonder, steeped in creativity, and deeply connected to your inner landscape.
1. Our journey starts with an invitation to listen together to the stories you are telling yourself right where you are, and the things you already know.
2. These stories will offer keys of focus to unlock the gates of your experience. We'll dive into your goals, the changes you have been sensing, and begin to understand the landscape... both inside you and in the context of your business.
3-4. Then, we'll uncover your CoreStory, Deeper Why & Guiding Metaphor that are essential to untangling your ideas and honoring your insight. These will offer light and direction that shapes the rest of the journey.
5. With your CoreStory defined and your guiding metaphor aligned, our work together shifts to creating your business framework in what feels like your new favorite sketchbook or creative journal.
6. Then we pick some of those idea threads to weave into a friendship bracelet... symbolizing the building blocks of a custom creative challenge you use to jumpstart growth in your community that leads into your offer structure.
7. This positions you for long term growth and abundance, as well as setting you on your way to flourishing in your creative business from the inside out.
- We unlock your purpose to unleash your growth. Because growth tactics are not sustainable if they are not rooted in your CoreStory & Deeper Why.
- Your business homework is completed in a creative journal—because if creative business is fine art, it deserves an artist's sketchbook.
- We don't force you into a strategy box of best practices that shut you down or separate you from your creative center.
- Our practices are developed through decades of experience and grad-school level academic research
- We blend strategy with artistry to meet your unique coaching needs.
- We use the power of metaphor, symbols, immersive experience, and literary quality storytelling to create a transformative coaching environment.
il·lus·trat·ed
/ˈiləˌstrādəd,iˈləˌstrādəd/
From early 16th century (in the sense ‘illuminate, shed light on’): from Latin illustrat- ‘lit up’, from the verb illustrare, from in- ‘upon’ + lustrare ‘illuminate’.
(Oxford Dictionary)
Here's Some of What Sets the Illustrated Business™ Experience Apart...
Tap on the Icons to See How Each Step of the Journey Unfolds
Start here
Our journey starts with an invitation to listen together to the stories you are telling yourself right where you are, and the things you already know.
These stories will offer keys of focus to unlock the gates of your experience. We'll unpack the changes you have been sensing, and begin to understand the landscape... both inside you and around you.
the first steps
We will go deeper into your business, what is working well and what isn't. We'll dive into your goals, where you are feeling stuck, and what ideas are tangled. This will help us get a big picture point of view as we explore the landscape of what lights you up. Really lights you up... deep down.
through the gates
Then, we'll uncover your CoreStory & Deeper Why that are essential to untangling your ideas and honoring your insights. These will offer light and direction that shapes the rest of the journey. I'll teach you one of the most powerful neuroscience backed ways to use your CoreStory for transformation that lasts.
your CoreStory
With your CoreStory defined and Deeper Why aligned, our work together shifts to creating a business offer framework that unlocks growth. And we do that with customized exercises in what feels like your new favorite sketchbook or creative journal.
Then we pick some of those idea threads to weave into a friendship bracelet... Symbolizing the building blocks of a custom creative challenge you use to jumpstart growth in your community that leads into your offer structure.
your sketchbook & bracelet
Your Adventure Awaits
What's a CoreStory? Here's Mine.
Many years ago...
I will never forget the day our money ran out. And I was literally staring at a wall. Almost 20 years ago, I led a project in a war-torn patch of Africa caring for 130 children plus staff.
The nearest bank was 8 hours away in a neighboring country over rebel-controlled roads. I will never forget what that felt like.
Kids have to eat. Staff need to be paid. Donations had dried up to a trickle. I can still see the spot on the cement wall I stared at, when these ⬇️ words tore through my soul.
Stop Stating the Statistics &
That was the moment EVERYthing changed.
Stop simply reporting results and start telling the story in a way that invites people to become a part of it.
I began a daily blog on a laptop with missing keys powered by a noisy generator with a barely-there cell phone connection that made dial-up look like the transporter in Star Trek. Right there in the middle of the star-filled African night, I would write the stories of our days.
We went from crickets to building an audience of 100K+ readers in less than a year. EVEN in a space oversaturated with great organizations in the middle of the 2008 US economic crisis where uncertainty and compassion fatigue was at an all time high.
I know this works because I've lived it. Storytelling became central in raising over 7 figures to keep that project going and growing even after I left.
I saw the power of narrative first hand to turn what felt like a "salesy" pitch into a beautiful invitation for our audience to become a part of our unfolding story.
Start Stewarding the Story
Because the Right Story Can Change
Everything...
Click to see our Thriving Triad Color Wheel... >>
Real Talk. Even Fancy Pants Coaching Can Be More Hype Than Help Sometimes
You know the kind of situation where you show up on a call and wonder if the person you are paying actually did their homework to be ready to serve you or if they are just winging it on your very expensive, hard-earned dime.
Top-tier coaching comes with bespoke top-shelf homework.
I select from and customize my original exercises depending on your needs and we keep it feeling more like an approachable, creative journal exercise than an overwhelming business school cram session.
(^^ I’ve been there too and it's rubbish. I want put my stake
in the ground and change things. We're worth more than that. 👊🏻)
Cool 😎, I LOVE it when a good plan comes together >>
Welcome to the Triad
02. | Untangle Your Ideas
01. | Unlock Your Purpose
03. | Unleash Your Growth
Thriving
"Michele is beyond amazing at this. She has taken my ideas, scratched onto various pieces of paper, and it was like she understood me and my vision even better than I did!! Thank you, Michele... You are one outstanding woman."
-Heather, Fine Artist & Educator
Hi, I'm Michele
I'm a best-selling Substack author and artist who has sold out collaborations with brands like Appointed® in minutes. Published two books. Spoke from international stages. Lived on or between 4 contents. Raised a $1M plus using strategic storytelling in the nonprofit world.
I've helped 11K+ creatives unlock new levels of their creativity at The Wonder Habit™, spoken to leaders in person in 23 countries, & had my artwork seen by millions.
Creator of the wonder habit™. author. PAINTER OF WHIMSICAL THINGS. RESIDENT CREATIVITY NERD. POODLE MOM. LOVER OF BLANK CANVASES, OPEN ROADS, AND WILD SPACES.
PASSIONATE ABOUT THE ART OF STORYTELLING. alliteration obsessed. can find a metaphor in almost anything.
Add in:
30+ years mentoring leaders around the world. I know how critical it is to connect your creative work with your CoreStory and your Deeper Why.
An MA in Organizational Leadership where I dove into creativity and the role of metaphor and storytelling to change organizations.
A stake on the hill saying creative business is a fine art form. That means it can hold all the creative parts of you. And it can flow from the core of who you are.
Creativity & storytelling nerd, which means I study the research and stay up to the minute so I have the best information and practical tools to support you with. We don't do fluff coaching around here.
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I mix paintbrushes & poetry, brain research & business strategy every day. I taught my first creative leadership workshop to business leaders when I was 16 & spent 7 years living a working in a African conflict zone. We got this.
well, THIS might be exactly what you're looking for if you'd like...
Still Wondering if This Is a Good Fit for You?
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🧶
🖌️
🗝
🐊
☕️
Imagine what it would be like to greet each day with a deep sense of knowing you are living and creating out of your central purpose.
The business that once drained you dry, now fills you up.
Instead of feeling like your creative call stops when you put on the manager-of a-million-things hat, there's a sparkle in your eye because this business side of things is also a fine art form.
Even in the tasks that used to stress you out, you notice wonder is silently seeping in at all the edges.
Stories of how your words and brush strokes, the services you render with care are touching lives regularly pop up in your inbox.
Friend, you are standing right on the threshold of a new and great adventure.
in life . in creative business.
The Journeys That Matter Most Start Inside Us
The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.
This is Your Invitation to Say Yes to the More You Are Made For
- j.r.r. tolkien -
Everything you're looking for is on
the other side of your next step.
The Investment
$6,500
MY DISCOVERY CALL PROMISE
I do not do hard sells.
If I don't think I'm a good fit for you, I will give you my best recommendations for other options.
I show up to discovery calls with one goal in mind: to get to know you and serve you well in the process. It is my delight to pour a cup of coffee and have the honor of hearing your story.
Even if we don't work together. You get me for 45 minutes. And I will give you my best. Because you deserve it.
Payment Plans Are Available.
"Michele is the epitome of the phrase “under-promise and over deliver.” She is a master storyteller, paints words on paper and has the gift of anticipating her client’s needs.
It’s rare that you meet someone that surpasses their reputation; however, Michele is that person... If you are looking for a word-whispering, master consultant extraordinaire, you want Michele to be the one you work with."
-Nikki & Torrey, Therapists & Educators
You Just Sent in Your Discovery Call Application 👏🏻
What Happens Now?
I'll review your application and let you know if I think this service might be a good fit for you, along with some availability options for our free, initial 45 minute discovery call.
Discovery call day, the kettle is perked and we hop on zoom to get to know one another. It will be my joy to serve you and learn more about your business and story.
If we decide to work together, we pick a starting date for our journey. Dates book quickly because I only work with 2-3 active clients at a time in this service.
Then I begin building your welcome package, getting you onboarded into our portal system, and gathering all the necessary details.
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Have questions?
I'd sure love to answer them!
When our start date arrives, we start with our first call and away we go!
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And you can have more of them. Every day.
@dmicheleperry
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And you can have more of them. Every day.
You Were Made for the Moments When Your Soul Comes Most Alive.
@dmicheleperry
