Mentoring Is My Craft

Nothing brings me greater joy than mentoring visionary women founders and CEOs who are creating a world that works for everyone. It’s the craft I’ve been immersed in, in one form or another, for all of my adult life. It’s the craft that has made me who I am today. It has been my teacher, beloved, mentor and inspiration through every stage of my life. My gratitude for this sacred work is boundless. When I’m in creative collaboration with my clients, we are both entirely at home, utterly at ease; brimming with curiosity, wiggly with delight; riding the spirit of adventure out to the limits of the known world, and beyond.

My tools are ones I’ve developed over the past 50+ years — endlessly creative in their uses, yet sturdy, down to earth, deeply familiar. Pattern recognition. Energy alchemy. Story-making. Business shaping. Miracle-diving. Seeding oysters — grit to pearls. Conjuring transformation. Making worlds of words, images, patterns, fractals, energy, and bringing them to life with the help of the Devas.

This is my place of belonging; of service and heart, art and magic, story-telling and story-building. This is me, creating in partnership with the Sacred, in partnership with you, your business, your soul, and the Deva of your business, among others.

There are many things I’m not good at. I suck at most sports; cannot play the guitar, piano or trumpet; am abysmal at party chit-chat; all thumbs when it comes to sewing, baking and so much more.

But invite me into a relationship with your soul, your business, your creative vision, your true and tender self — and all prescriptions, all comparisons fall away. I don’t care how anyone else mentors, or works with energy, or crafts stories or shapes a business or a book or a work of art. I don’t care if you’re pope or president, twenty or ninety years old. I don’t care if what you bring to our sessions involves your business or your life, your kids, your health, your wildest ideas or most pie-in-the-sky dreams.

If you have a vision that is in alignment with your soul, and in service to your world, we can map the pathways that will get you from where you are to where you want to be. Your soul and the soul of your business will show us both what’s currently invisible — will invite us into impossible corners and across distant horizons to the land where your vision has become reality. Together, we will make it so.

We will weave your vision and your work into the ecology we are building together.

This process is neither prescriptive nor predictable — it unfolds organically, from the depths of who you are, from the depths of the business you’ve built. I trust it implicitly, because I have long, deep experience with this craft — like a fish in water, this is my element. I never think about whether I’m doing it right, or what the outcome will be because I know that those outcomes we can dream of pale in comparison to what’s possible when we partner with the Deva of your business to bring its pattern to life.

So long as you’re willing to be in collaborative partnership; so long as you’re honest and brave and ready to do the work, I’m all in. I hold nothing back. Everything I’ve ever created, every experience I’ve ever had, every golden thread of knowledge, understanding, wisdom spun over a lifetime’s apprenticeship to soul — all of it is placed in service to you, your business and your vision.

Mentoring is different from teaching, which, along with writing, is also my craft. Teaching, of necessity, requires a more clearly delineated structure, while mentoring is improvisational in the truest sense of the word. We begin where you are. We make the path by walking it. Along the way, we embrace whatever we encounter, and weave it into the heart of wholeness — yours, that of your business, and of the ecology we shape together.

This craft is my home, the place where I know every room, every street, every lamppost, every tree and cloud and ocean current, every star in its infinite sky. It lives in me; its landscape is etched in my bones, its rivers flow through my arteries and veins. I know how each inhabitant of this country functions; what we can create together.

I know this, not because I’ve explored all that the mentoring relationship has to offer; not because I know you or your business as intimately as you do, but because this is my place of belonging. Everything here responds to my love, devotion, skill and artistry, with love, devotion and artistry of its own. Everything here befriends, embraces and holds both of us — you and me — in the profound safety of a living lap, where miracles unfold in perfect timing. I have been in intimate relationship with this craft for 70 years; our connection is as deep and enduring as my relationship with the Sacred.

My clients flourish in this environment, which is as wondrously nourishing as spring rain. My clients’ businesses bloom. Magic infuses our work together. Miracles unfold.

How about you? What’s your relationship with your craft? Your life with it is a love letter you write every day. What does your love letter to your craft reveal about you, and what you’re born to do?

Love,
Hiro