Topics discussed in this episode with time stamps

00:00 – 00:46 “I was working with a team of 13 leaders, I think it was 12 or 13, and did the emotional intelligence assessment with each of them, sat with each of them individually, and did their individual coaching; helped them orient to their opportunities; and then met with them for their first team meeting where I bring them the data and I talk about their goals. And we tidy up, and everybody leaves, and I’m cleaning, and one of the VPs walks back in, and it was so cute. He leaned in like he was telling me a secret. He’s like, ‘I think I get it.’ And I’m like, ‘What do you get?’ He goes, ‘If I behave differently, other people do too.’ I’m like, ‘Tell me more.’ He goes, ‘I see how I can influence the team. Because everyone thinks it’s everybody else.'” — Michelle Choate

00:47 – 01:05 Welcome to Peppershock Media’s Marketing Expedition Podcast

01:06 – 01:48 Michelle’s Background

01:49 – 07:14 Marketing Essentials Moment: Incorporating Emotional Intelligence in Marketing

07:15 – 09:49 Welcome to the show, Michelle!

09:50 – 15:43 Emotional intelligence in workplaces

15:44 – 20:20 Team dynamics

20:21 – 23:10 Culture as a business tool

23:11 – 27:12 Emotional intelligence retreats concept

27:13 – 30:24 Personal growth

30:25 – 31:24 Self-compassion

31:25 – 32:00 Poderific, baby! Whether you’re looking for a podcast studio to rent or need help with the entire production and distribution of your podcast, we gotcha covered.

32:01 – 35:29 Promoting self-awareness

36:30 – 00:00 Marketing for wellness retreats

42:54 – 00:00 Branding transformational experiences

45:51 – 00:00 Reach out to Michelle

47:12 – 50:04 Promoting Idaho’s hidden beauty

50:05 – 50:21 Thank you so much, Michelle! Share this podcast, give us a review, and enjoy your marketing journey!

50:22 – 52:08 Join the Marketing Expedition Community today!

Like what you hear, but need more information?

Meet with Rhea Allen

————————————————————————————————————————

267 — Michelle Choate: Emotional Intelligence, Self-Compassion, and Retreats That Transform

Cold Open (Clip)

Michelle Choate: I was working with a team of 12 or 13 leaders. I did the emotional intelligence assessment with each of them, met one-on-one for coaching, and helped them orient to their opportunities.

Then we held their first team meeting. I brought the data, we talked about goals, and everyone headed out. I stayed behind cleaning up.

One of the VPs walked back in. He leaned in like he was telling me a secret and said, “I think I get it.”

I asked, “What do you get?”

He said, “If I behave differently, other people do too.”

I said, “Tell me more.”

He said, “I see how I can influence the team. Everyone thinks it’s everybody else.”

Podcast Intro

Intro: Welcome to the Marketing Expedition podcast, an auditory journey through the latest in marketing, branding, and advertising. Now, here’s your Marketing Expedition guide, Rhea Allen.

Episode Intro + Marketing Essentials Moment

Rhea Allen: On this episode of the Marketing Expedition podcast, I get to speak with Michelle Choate. She’s a keynote speaker, leadership coach, executive team coach, and organizational development consultant with over 25 years of experience in organizational culture, individual development, and leadership development.

Michelle helps people master self-leadership—taking back their power and maximizing their influence in complex, volatile work environments. Emotional intelligence is the foundation of her approach to increasing self-compassion, self-awareness, and impact.

You’re in for a treat. I love talking with Michelle. She’s been a friend for a while, and she’s also just a lovely person to be around.

But first, it’s time for your Marketing Essentials moment—the basics you need to keep building your brand and your bottom line.

Today’s topic: How emotional intelligence shows up in marketing.

I did a little research and pulled a few practical nuggets you can apply to your brand.

Self-awareness (for your brand): Your brand needs internal clarity—values, mission, and voice. Brand self-awareness also means knowing your marketing strengths and weaknesses.

Self-regulation: Your brand needs guardrails. That means staying truthful, legal, and authentic—without trying to be everything to everyone. If you try to be all things to all people, you end up being nothing to nobody.

Motivation: Consider what motivates decision-makers to buy, support, or engage. Also ask: what’s motivating your brand? What are you committed to portraying—and why?

Empathy: Use empathy maps. Step into your ideal customer’s shoes: what are they thinking, feeling, hearing, saying, and doing? Sometimes you’re not your own target audience. Just because you like something doesn’t mean your audience will—and just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean they won’t.

Social skills: Marketing is relationship-building. People do business with brands they know, like, and trust. Social skills show up in everything from customer service to how you make people feel after they buy.

All right—let’s get into the interview.

Interview

Rhea Allen: Welcome to the Marketing Expedition podcast. I’m your host, Rhea Allen. I’m the president and CEO of Peppershock Media and the founder of the Marketing Expedition community.

Today we have Michelle Choate with us. Welcome.

Michelle Choate: Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.

Rhea Allen: I love it when we get to do these in person and can see eyeball to eyeball. It’s especially fun when we have people local to the Treasure Valley.

Start us off with your journey—how you got to where you are. Give us the story beyond the bio. Who is Michelle?

Michelle Choate: The journey has been one of self-development and self-reflection, and it parallels the work I do. I wouldn’t do this work if I hadn’t taken the journey myself.

I came into organizational development—looking at how systems within organizations support people. In that work, you look at people, process, and technology.

I trained a lot on conflict and communication. People would say, “That’s interesting, but let me tell you my story.” So I started deepening my understanding of the individual experience—not just the process and technology.

I noticed something: often, people looked unsuccessful in an environment that simply wasn’t supporting their performance.

That led me to ask: how do I help people maximize control over themselves in complex environments?

That brought me to emotional intelligence. I became certified as an emotional intelligence coach. I assess people and do 360s.

That shifted my view of self-efficacy at work. I didn’t want to watch people become victims of their environment.

Emotional intelligence helps people know themselves, use emotional information productively, and express themselves in meaningful ways. It’s the basis for most human interaction. We are driven by emotion.

When workplaces deny emotion, you see burnout, low resilience, bullying, and other unproductive cultural patterns.

One of my favorite parts of this work is helping people see emotions as data. When an environment triggers an emotion, it’s telling you something.

Instead of denying it or pushing it down, you acknowledge it, explore it objectively, and understand what’s being activated—so you can make a different choice next time.

I’ve been on my own as ML Choate since 2019, right before COVID. That was a major transition for everyone.

Through diligence and community connections, I’ve worked with clients across Idaho and outside Idaho. Even in complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty, and volatility—people still have choice.

When people feel empowered, they’re more productive, handle conflict better, and show up with more compassion—for themselves and each other.

Rhea Allen: I’ve done an emotional intelligence assessment before, but it’s been a while. For people who don’t know what it is, explain the assessment and what you learn from it.

Michelle Choate: I use the EQ-i 2.0. There are only a few assessments that are valid and reliable—meaning they measure what they say they measure, consistently.

I like EQ-i 2.0 because it’s granular. Instead of four broad buckets, it offers 15 data points. That helps us understand, with specificity, the behaviors we use when we’re emotional—or when we’re facing emotion.

I coach from a strengths-based approach. I can say, “You have high assertiveness—that’s a powerful strength. Your empathy is lower. Let’s look at what happens when assertiveness is high and empathy is low.”

The goal isn’t to change who you are. It’s to help you see where your behaviors stop working—and how to use your strengths to get better outcomes.

I also believe in the 360 component. Humans are notoriously bad at self-assessment.

With an EQ 360, we can compare how you see yourself versus how others experience you. Sometimes you think a skill is low, but others experience it as strong. That helps us make unconscious strengths into intentional tools.

At the heart of my coaching is this: most people come to work to do a good job. They want to.

Rhea Allen: They would like to—if they have the tools.

Michelle Choate: Exactly. When outcomes get blamed on personality, stress, budgets, or environment, people lose agency.

Emotional intelligence helps people influence more productively. It gives them insight into team dynamics and more objectivity.

That objectivity is powerful: noticing emotions—yours and others’—as information, not as a trigger to react.

Our world demands hypervigilance. We live in fight-or-flight.

Emotional intelligence helps us step out of fight-or-flight, be more present, and be more effective.

Rhea Allen: So when teams take the assessment, they get results back, and you help them interpret it?

Michelle Choate: Always. I never hand someone a set of data and say, “Good luck.”

In individual coaching, we do a deep debrief, set goals, and create a cadence of meetings to develop key skills and maximize strengths.

In team coaching, individuals meet less frequently, but the team meets more often. We focus on behaviors that reflect an emotionally intelligent team.

The team score isn’t just an average. It’s about how the collective behavior shows up.

For example: if a team is highly assertive, how strong is the listening in the room? We create intentional norms and actions so every voice can come to the table—not just the most assertive.

Rhea Allen: Do you do workshops with teams—come in and work with them for a while?

Michelle Choate: Yes. With EQ work, it’s usually a six- to eight-month cadence. The work is rich.

A one-time in-service is like giving someone a recipe but not telling them how to turn on the oven.

The coaching activates the learning.

That said, I do keynotes and trainings on related topics—self-compassion, resilience, emotional self-awareness, and self-talk.

One of the biggest benefits of in-services is when leadership steps out of the directive role and learns alongside the team. There’s real leverage when people learn together.

Rhea Allen: Culture is part of your brand. Your brand is your culture.

When you build culture from the inside out, you create happy campers—and that leads to happy customers.

Michelle Choate: The outcomes of this work are cultural. It’s about who I want to be at work, how I want to be with others, and what we reward and punish.

If we can’t name productive behaviors—or redirect unproductive ones—we build a culture that doesn’t drive the outcomes we want.

Culture isn’t just “We’re happy here.” It’s: are we talking about the right things? Can we have productive conflict? Do I feel heard? Can I bring tough issues to my boss?

Rhea Allen: Have you ever worked with teams where people are stubborn and don’t want to change?

Michelle Choate: All the time.

In individual coaching, it’s rare. In team environments, it’s common.

Here’s a real example. I worked with a team of 12 or 13 leaders. I assessed each person, coached them individually, and then held their first team meeting.

After the meeting, everyone left and I was cleaning up. One VP came back in and said, “I think I get it.”

I asked what he meant.

He said, “If I behave differently, other people do too. I see how I can influence the team.”

Everyone thinks it’s everyone else. That’s human.

So I drive toward individual contribution—even at the team level.

Rhea Allen: People get stuck in habits. Change is hard.

Michelle Choate: Most people rise in an organization based on skills that worked before—but those aren’t always the skills they need as they move up.

Emotional intelligence supports a growth mindset. Learning becomes something you embrace because it doesn’t threaten your identity.

Retreats: SHINE and What’s Next

Rhea Allen: Let’s talk about the retreats you’ve been doing. Tell me all about them.

Michelle Choate: Thank you for asking.

I’ve been doing emotional intelligence coaching and consulting for seven years, and I love it.

About three years ago, I started wondering: what happens if I take people out of the corporate environment and give them two or three uninterrupted days to focus on themselves?

No phones. No computers. A nurturing space that holds room for vulnerability—so people can shift viewpoints.

I didn’t see emotional intelligence retreats outside of corporate settings, so I built what I wanted to experience.

Last August, I brought a group together. What happened was more than I could have imagined.

Mid-morning on the first full day, someone pulled me aside and asked, “Did you curate this group?”

They said, “Something is happening. I’m having emotional connections with strangers I’ve known for five hours.”

I didn’t curate the group. It was self-selection. Each person chose to be there.

We wrapped the weekend deeply moved.

One woman said, “For the first time, I’m being kind to myself—and it’s wonderful.”

The foundation of the retreat is self-compassion. We can’t truly show compassion to others if we don’t show it to ourselves.

Another attendee had experienced deep loss and hadn’t given herself permission to grieve. In the retreat space, she felt safe to be vulnerable and realized she hadn’t been compassionate with herself.

She was also considering a career advancement. After the retreat, she applied—and got it. She’s now in a senior executive role in Boise.

Another woman told us she literally saved a life after the retreat. She was in an auto accident and performed life-saving measures on another driver.

She said that three months earlier, she wouldn’t have had the courage. She would have waited for someone else because she didn’t believe she was capable.

Those stories still move me.

Self-compassion is emotional intelligence in action: self-awareness and self-management.

If I can’t name a feeling, I can’t manage it.

If I notice a friend is sad, I’ll say, “You seem sad—what’s happening?” That’s compassion.

The work is learning how to offer that same compassion inward.

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Upcoming Retreats + The Bigger Vision

Rhea Allen: I love that you get to create these experiences—and you’re doing another one, right?

Michelle Choate: I am.

SHINE is the first retreat—self-compassion and emotional intelligence.

We’re running our second offering of SHINE at the end of May.

The second retreat in the series will launch later this fall.

Self-compassion has two sides: gentle self-compassion—kindness—and fierce self-compassion—assertiveness, confidence, and boundaries.

That fall retreat will be the next level.

I want people to experience SHINE first so there’s a deepening of self-awareness before I bring in the next set of tools.

You can attend the retreats separately, but together they create a powerful arc.

This isn’t just a moment—it’s a movement.

Rhea Allen: And it sounds like people stay connected afterward too.

Michelle Choate: They do. They have a group text thread where they support each other.

We’re getting together again in June to celebrate professional and personal wins.

This work lives in community.

We are not who we are except in relation to others.

Marketing the Retreats (Attraction + Brand)

Rhea Allen: Let’s talk marketing. You didn’t curate the group, but you did attract people to sign up. What did you do?

Michelle Choate: For my coaching and consulting, I work primarily by referral. I’ve built a network through deep work and honest conversations.

When I started envisioning Elate, I reached out to that network and asked:

• What would it look like to do this work for a whole weekend instead of two hours?
• What would you want out of that experience?

I also surveyed people about elements of the program—sound baths, somatic yoga—so I could meet people where they were.

That probably felt like curating, but I didn’t turn anyone away.

I wanted a like-minded group.

What I’m learning now is that I’m not just selling learning and development.

This is a tourism product.

I’m selling destination and transformation—not just content.

I want people in nature. Bonfires. Comforting food. A space that engages all senses.

Even saying “selling” makes me uncomfortable, but I’m learning how to tell the story.

Long-term, I envision people coming to Boise for these experiences. That means telling the story of Idaho in a way that engages hearts and senses.

It’s a different business model—and I’m learning fast.

Rhea Allen: Are you using the same location every time?

Michelle Choate: I’m changing it up. Not because the locations aren’t great, but because I’m testing what fits.

If you’re doing yoga, you need space. You also need enough bathrooms—especially for 10 women.

Rhea Allen: Are these retreats only for women?

Michelle Choate: Right now, yes.

Long term, my vision is inclusive spaces. Creating psychological safety for every attendee is part of the work.

I don’t see myself doing couples retreats. That’s a different layer of complexity.

Could this be meaningful for men? Yes. I would co-facilitate with someone who can connect with that audience directly.

I also want to embrace the LGBTQIA community in this work.

For now, women is natural—because I wrote these retreats for me.

The growth arc is inclusive of all.

Rhea Allen: I remember seeing photos and videos from the retreat. That’s a smart way to promote it—letting attendees share the experience in their words.

Testimonials are powerful.

Michelle Choate: That’s part of my learning. I’m not from a marketing background.

I’m also learning brand. ML Choate is me. Elate is its own brand.

It’s a different space than corporate work—because it’s chosen by individuals.

Branding a transformational experience is something I’m digging into now.

Rhea Allen: You could eventually train other facilitators.

Michelle Choate: That’s on my business plan.

I can bring in associates as co-facilitators—or create a retreat company where people license the retreats and we support them with resources and organization.

I’m excited to see which path makes the work stick.

This is a business, but it’s not just a job. I’m doing it because it makes a difference.

It’s an important time for this work.

Rhea Allen: We should capture more footage—what people are comfortable sharing—and get post-retreat reflections.

Michelle Choate: Yes. I didn’t know to do that the first time, but I’m learning now.

Attendees often describe the experience in language that resonates more than mine.

Their interpretation might match my learning objectives—or it might be unexpected. Either way, it shows the experience is co-created by the space and the people.

Where to Find Michelle

Rhea Allen: If people want to learn more or sign up, where should they go?

Michelle Choate: The retreat company is elateretreats.com.

You can also find my coaching and consulting at michellechoate.com.

You can find me on LinkedIn at Michelle Choate, and there’s also an Elate page there.

I’m on Instagram and Facebook too—I’m learning these modalities to tell the story.

My vision is to be international within the next three years.

Bring people here, go there—I’m excited about this part of the journey.

Rhea Allen: You’re right that it can be a tourism platform.

There are tourism partnerships and grants, and we can connect you with people who do that work.

Cascade Chamber of Commerce is one of our clients. Cascade is a mountain town about three hours from Boise, near McCall and the lake. It’s beautiful.

When you bring people to a location, it’s “heads in beds.” People eat, explore, and have experiences.

There’s rafting, ATV rentals, outdoor adventures—so many partnership opportunities.

Michelle Choate: For Idaho specifically, the Southwestern Idaho Tourism Association is an amazing group.

Skål International is another group educating me on this industry.

As an Idahoan and a small-town girl, bringing people to a location means a lot.

I’m always looking for partnerships.

Rhea Allen: We work with SWITA too.

There’s grant funding to promote regions. You can’t always promote one business directly, but you can promote events and experiences.

We’ll talk more about that.

Michelle Choate: Thank you.

As a native Idahoan, I get the “don’t move here” jokes.

But I love travel, and almost everywhere I go, I think, “I could live here.” People are beautiful.

One gift of bringing people to Idaho is showing the richness of our communities.

Rhea Allen: Cascade is a great example.

Closing

Rhea Allen: Thank you so much, Michelle, for sharing your wisdom and your journey.

Any last parting words before we wrap up?

Michelle Choate: Only that moments like this—spending time with someone I’ve met professionally and gotten to know personally—mean a lot. I’m grateful.

Rhea Allen: Thank you. And now I need a testimonial from you about attending a Word of Mouth Mixer.

Michelle Choate: I’m in.

Rhea Allen: Awesome.

Thank you again, Michelle, for coming out to Nampa in our Peppershock Poderific podcast studio.

And for those of you watching or listening, thank you.

The best thing you can do for Michelle and me is share this episode with someone who needs to hear it.

And if there’s anything Peppershock can do for you, let us know.

Until next time, enjoy your marketing journey.

Podcast Outro

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