My clients often are surprised by the stories I ask them to tell during the intake process. As we begin our work together, your family stories are paramount to laying the groundwork for career and personal breakthroughs. Frequently, our first, hour-long session is dedicated to a recounting of your history.

And there is a method to the madness.

In order to build out your real-time strategy for promotions, pay raises, professional exposure, and wraparound elevated results, we need to locate you in the chain of your family history. In particular, because so many clients retain me for financial results, I’ll need to learn about your mixed class background.

I start off by asking clients to tell me the story of your parents’ childhood, followed by your grandparents’ childhood. We go as far back as your family stories allow for. When did your family arrive here and under what circumstances? How did they make their way? What lessons did your parents learn when they were little? How did they teach you those lessons when you were a child?

It turns out that for most of the people I work with, there are old, inherited lessons about “work,” “wealth,” “success,” and your “value.” These patterns are transmitted from one generation to the next, not just through direct word of mouth, but also through tone, role modeling, and drive as well as through omission, silence, and anxiety.

The information our great grandparents, grandparents, and parents pass down to each generation is comprised of what they were able to figure out. It was the best they could do, to teach their strategies for “making it” in their time and place, in what was often an unkind economy.

It sometimes happens, however, that the strategies you were taught are not applicable to the challenges you currently face.

During our work together, I will ask you to evaluate beliefs you didn’t know you had and take actions that bring you directly into the next phase of your capacity to achieve. Far from theoretical, in my practice I often stay partnered with clients until they “arrive” in their next phase, and we celebrate the results together.

In the last calendar year, 80% of my clients graduated from my consulting practice with significant increases—ranging from the size of the team they manage; their professional exposure through speeches, interviews, and published works; their client pipeline; their salary; and their digital footprint.

Your family gave you what they could, and you took that information as far as it could serve you. That’s where we begin.

For most of us, in this next phase, you’ll need improved strategies and targeted healing to get your new results. Your value, your worth, your capacity to achieve and grow remain available for expansion. And that’s where we’re headed.