Retreats
Customized personal and leadership retreats in an inspiring setting
- Step back from your life to make sense of it
- Clarify your past and envision your next steps in life
- Create an actionable plan that gives you confidence and inspiration
Personalized and group retreats can be combined with coaching programs or booked separately.
Adventures
Wilderness Trips and
Leadership Challenges
Personalized & group adventures to align, explore and stretch your edge
- Let yourself be touched by the power of wilderness
- Reconnect with your primal nature
- Do something you have never done before that inspires and challenges you to take new perspectives on life and your purpose
- Reclaim your dreams, voice and passion
Wilderness trips and leadership challenges can be combined with coaching programs or booked separately.
Nature Calling
I just want to get away. I want to feel my feet on the earth. I need permission from the trees, wild winds, mountain boars, expansive vistas and the instinctual edge left behind by known but not yet seen families of wolves. The world is full of shit. I don’t agree to it. I feel woken up, not by an alarm clock but by ancestors urging me to continue, to do better, because I can. We can. I smell death and the life that I want now. I feel nourished and protected but not in the way that you think. I didn’t come here for comfort. I came to create electricity. With you. With all things. Not by comforts and false promises that I cannot taste in my throat in this moment. Not by anything beyond my finger tips. Not by anything that I cannot validate with my own senses nor do anything practical with one moment from now. I will find it, sit for a long time for it, walk for it, hunt for it. It’s possible. My body knows it. There is a better way. I can make something out of this. I can make something out of really bad situations. We are all going to be food again. What table am I setting?
WILLIAM WALKER
Testimonials
“Where do I start. Well, I met William on a business trip in Whistler Canada and I was immediately struck by his presence.
I had several corporate coaches that were all about peak state and “hype” but being a father, arborist, entrepreneur, artist and someone deeply connected with nature, when I met William, he was absolutely present, in the moment with me. From my perspective this is a trait I rarely find in others let alone in another man. Being present is a trait I rarely find in myself.
We live in a world of heavy data and intentional distraction. I spend most of my time in the Colorado Rockies, with trees and in the forest, managing 3 companies. William has intentionally set himself on a natural path, a path of “nature”. To start our journey together, we did what I would refer to as a “survival trip” in the Olympic mountains outside of Seattle.
We began the journey with cold rain coming down sideways, with 20-30 mph sustained winds continuing all night, tying down the tents not sure if they would hold until the morning… not sure if we would lose them and frigidly have to hike out 15 plus miles in the dark over rough terrain. The first 24 hours were brutal (I really wasn’t sure if William would make it out alive, but I knew I would find a way… lol). The hike out was not on a hiking trail but a 15-mile journey on a creek that used to be a trail (I never stepped on dry land for 2 days straight).
We saw bears and elk going about life as if there was nothing but a fall storm rolling through. The trip ended with a clear realization of the perfection of nature, and an understanding that I had been separating myself from nature despite my unique occupation.
William has a unique ability to tap into something I have never experienced before with a coach. It is something I experience when I am in nature, and when I am with the trees. A slower pace that is grounded in a timeless awareness. It is incredible to have a coach that is able to sit, be present and see deeply into my own nature. I am grateful beyond belief for our friendship and for an awareness of my own path. William is one of a kind and he is now part a permanent influence on the fingerprint I wish to leave on this world. A life of service, connection, and contribution! A “legacy” is what we do for the world, for our communities and for our families. A legacy is not what we amass, purchase and collect over our life. A life of fulfillment is a life of service.”
– Matthew Sadler
President/Founder at Rūtsu
“The Executive Alignment retreat I did with William had a tremendous impact on my business, but more importantly, the way I thought about my business. Being a leader of a growing live music agency, it’s easy to get consumed with operational concerns. Going into my fifth year of business I was transitioning into a more pure leadership role where previously I was doing a bit of everything. I felt a call to explore what being a leader in my organization could look like and go deeper into my own capacity for leadership – and what I could do to be as effective as possible. In the retreat, William lead an exploration deeper into the WHY of my business and specifically the meaning of the brand and my and my brand’s purposes. At times it was difficult to go deeper but William is a skilled listener and leader and he knew when to push me when more clarity was needed or when I wasn’t being fully honest with myself. We extracted a solid vision statement and a new vocabulary around my core values as a leader, and for the business, we created 5 core company values as well. This was a valuable experience for me and has helped shape the artist and employee culture in my organization.”
– Andrew St. Royal
CEO, St. Royal Entertainment
“In the fall of 2014, William Walker invited me to go homeless on the streets of Montreal for a weekend. I was advised to eat well before setting out because it could be my last meal for a few days. William asked that I leave my IDs, wallet, phone and money behind. It reminded me of when Jesus sent his followers out on a mission and asked them to leave their money and bags. Now that is true leadership development, where for a limited time, within certain parameters and with some guidance, you are stripped of who you think you are and what you think you have and are left with your truth.
Why did I want to engage in such an experience?
I wanted to experience, albeit for a short period of time, what it was like to be, to navigate and to act without identity, qualification or resource, only my essence.
Here is what I learned:
Curiosity. I am naturally drawn to things I have never done because I came to the realization a while ago that if I only did the things I had done before, I would never grow and would never learn.
Integrity. I invite leaders, executives and teams into an experience called Cleaning as Practice, which is a very outside the box experience that stretches people beyond their comfort zones. I thought integrity requires that I experience again and again, what I invite others into.
Togetherness. I agreed to homelessness because I would not be alone. We were two. When difficult experiences are shared, the negative effect is minimized.
Radicality. I needed my thinking and paradigm challenged and shattered if necessary, by truth. I figured that by putting myself in an entirely new situation with an unfamiliar set of variables, I will have to create new thought patterns just to deal with them. I knew that the easiest way to think outside the box was to come out of it. It is very simple: when you step outside the box, you will think outside the box. Leadership and organizational development programs that keep most variables constant are not truly transformational.
Immersive learning. True learning involves the heart, mind, and body. Most learning involves playing with other people’s ideas in our heads but true learning involves experiencing and feeling with our bodies and sensing and seeing with our hearts, enabling us to come up with original thought. I wanted to learn not only about homelessness, I wanted to learn about myself, my work and of course witness the city in a way I had never done. Real learning is experiential.
Juxtaposition. I love contrasts. A software developer becomes a better software developer when he or she is periodically exposed to experiences outside the world of coding. Juxtaposition enlarges our frame of reference. You are a better CEO the more you juxtapose your CEOness with a role that stands in sharp contrast to it like being a janitor, and vice versa. I went homeless because I wanted to better understand and appreciate homefulness. To learn about anything, it helps to experience its contrast.
Stripping. Floor stripping, perhaps the messiest and most difficult and time consuming cleaning task is also one of the most rewarding. This is the process of metamorphosis. The old self dies and a new self comes alive. This was my interpretation of the probability of not coming back alive. And really, we are not ready to live until we are ready to die are we? My primary reason for honoring the invitation to homelessness, which in a sense encapsulates all others, is that I wanted to be stripped of wax but also of dirt.”