Counselor and business coach

Published 5:00 am Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Joan Dudley, 53, calls herself the “chief freedom catalyst” of her business and advertises “spiritual communion” and “divine synchronicity” as part of her offerings as a counselor and business coach.

It’s not what you’d expect from a savvy businesswoman who increased revenue from $600,000 a year to $1.4 million at her industrial pressure-washer company in Modesto, Calif.

Dudley bought the family business in 1991 and had some initial challenges before turning it around into a “cash cow.” But after awhile, she started to feel trapped.

“After 20 years in industrial equipment sales and services, my soul was dying. My counselor said, ‘You’d better start planning your exit strategy,’” she said.

Dudley and her husband, Rob, who also worked for the company, were squabbling over work one day when Dudley snapped. “I said, ‘I’m taking the car, and I’m taking a credit card and I’m going to Santa Cruz to become a hippie.’”

That idea sounded pretty good to Rob. They decided to drop the argument and sell the business.

The couple pulled out a map and landed 120 days later in Central Oregon, which some friends had described as “heaven,” in 2004.

Dudley became a successful real estate agent in Prineville but started pursuing counseling and alternative medicine, which she had been interested in since she was a teenager, on the side.

She studied alternative therapies such as hypnotherapy, herbal studies and Reiki, a Japanese practice based on directing energy through the body with the hands, which supplemented her degree from Chapman University in psychology with a focus on addiction studies (she has been a recovering alcoholic for 20 years).

She quit real estate and opened The Sol Center about two years ago in a little house in Prineville that she remodeled into a cozy office. Since then, she’s treated clients for addiction — food and cigarettes are the most common — phobias and other mental health issues using a combination of hynotherapy and accupressure, or “tapping” on pressure points. She calls her method “Freedom Development” and sells an audio CD, “6 1/2 Minutes to Freedom,” through her website.

Dudley also provides counseling for small-business owners, drawing on her own struggles and successes in the business world. But those clients have been fewer and fewer as the Prineville economy struggles.

The bad economy in Prineville — Crook County leads the state in unemployment — is part of the reason she opened another location in downtown Bend, where she will start treating individuals and small-business clients in the next few weeks. We asked her some questions as she was setting up her new office.

Q: What was your first introduction to alternative medicine?

A: Mom was Finnish. We hardly ever went to the doctor. (She gave us) peppermint oil for upset stomach — most of the time, that’s what a kid has.

Q: Explain why you call your program “Freedom Development.”

A: Life is difficult. You’re not necessarily going to be, “Yea! Happy!” but if you are peaceful, if you can maintain a sense of peace in your mind, it helps to keep your priorities straight and make better decisions … and that’s freedom.

Q: Freedom from what, exactly?

A: Freedom from external events impacting your peace of mind. Freedom from long-held, limiting beliefs about ourselves, such as that we’re not valuable unless we make money.

Q: Who can be helped by this program?

A: One of the things that keeps us from believing in our business or personal lives, or from being closer to our family, is a deep, deep sense of not loving yourself just as you are, right now. Psychology and theology and medicine all agree that love really is what we want. We want to love and be loved, that’s what is our driver as human beings. So this program will work for anything.

Q: So you actually put people into a trance?

A: Under very strict ethical guidelines. We’re not stage performers. You bring a person into a trance and then we start with the immediate trauma, what are you experiencing right now that’s bothering you, and then … we just let your subconscious mind go back to the memory which was the source of what’s bothering you today. … It’s fascinating.

Q: How do you approach working with small-business owners?

A: I made some mistakes in the beginning (of operating a business) and I really was at a loss for how to proceed and we almost failed. But I allowed myself to get help and get advice. … So I approach it from a very sensitive point of view. This is a very vulnerable situation. (I am) helping a person overcome the fear, that vulnerability, and getting the help that they need in order to grow the business and push through the scary times, and also facing the situation where maybe it’s time to shut it down, maybe it’s time to move to something else. But you don’t get that when you’re stuck in your own head, and that is the key to a good business coach.