Meet Aaron Garland | Life Coach for Teens

We had the good fortune of connecting with Aaron Garland and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Aaron, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
Good question. It was both a thought process and an emotional response to what I saw in the classroom over 2 decades as a high school English teacher and special ed instructor. When I considered that what I was seeing in my classroom must be repeating itself over and over in classrooms across the country the rational response was alarm. Why? Because some large percentage of high school students are graduating without direction, with a weak understanding of how to think for themselves and tragically, with little enthusiasm for and awareness of the adventure that life is. Looking at a young person’s typical journey from adolescence to early adulthood I realized that there’s a big gap in their educational journey. Between what schools are able to provide and what parents have the time, wherewithal and resources to offer their kids I began thinking about what could be done.
Enter TigerTiger and our training and coaching program that asserts that life IS an adventure. Seriously. If one has an understanding of how to manage and direct one’s thoughts and actions, look out planet earth. Here comes amazing.
The original one-on-one coaching model that I started with in 2018, which focused primarily on strengthening executive skills, is morphing, as we speak, into an 8 week online curriculum to make this coaching accessible to a wider audience.
Thanks for asking ;-).

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Ah, where to begin? The things that engender a sense of pride and excitement run deep, yet the path follows so many twists and turns that it would take a much larger space to cover them with more than passing mention. Let me try to give it some shape and save the rest for another time. My career after college was launched on a kibbutz in Israel where I was recruited to fulfill a very non-kibbutz activity: play basketball for their first league team. After a couple of years I found myself playing stockbroker for Merrill Lynch, and followed that with a five year stint running an equestrian center, which morphed into a job on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska, that funneled me into a bartending position in Los Angeles, California, interspersed with auditions for TV and film, and an obvious leap from there into herding musk oxen in Alaska in preparation for four years of carpentry in Colorado. Life is an adventure. I clipped my peripatetic wings a bit and for the next 20 years I rattled around a variety of high school and middle school classrooms, lending my heart and mind to students at an alternative high school, a Montessori middle school, the educational program at a teen treatment center, and finally a high school special ed classroom. While exploring those settings I also started an educational non-profit called Houses for Higher Education (later renamed Co-Studio) that placed students with architects, engineers and builders to design and construct buildings for real world clients. 2018 is when I left the classroom as a full time teacher, started coaching students one-on-one, and gathered more and more evidence for my business idea: train and coach students in the areas that aren’t being addressed in school and for which parents are either lacking in time, experience or confidence to address. Yes, the symptoms are what are called executive functioning deficits, but the root cause is disengagement with the thrill of the adventure. TigerTiger is my response to that.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
The time of year means everything to my answer. If it’s winter we’ll hike the Highlands Bowl, a couple of times, ski to the tap room at the bottom of the mountain and have dinner…. probably at the Steak House. The next day we’d skin up something more beautiful than strenuous like Tiehack for the killer view at the Cliffhouse and cruise down to Home Team for something on their savory menu. Another day we could add in some more skinning to a 10th Mountain Hut, such as the Lindley Hut above Ashcroft. It’s an excellent destination and if conditions are safe offers great backcountry skiing. If it’s summer time there are so many great hikes and bike rides (road and mountain) that it’s a coin toss to figure out where to start but the Maroon Bells, the Four Mountain Pass, and the Lost Man Loop would be on the list. Our friends have cabins up in the mountains that make a great overnight destination summer or winter so a hike in the mountains would be on the itinerary. I’m a big fan of outdoor activities and outdoor dining as well, especially around the campfire on our bluff looking over the Roaring Fork River and I would plan that after a day spent rafting from Basalt to Glenwood Springs.
There are also some amazing people in our valley. It would be impossible to meet them all but I’d bring my guests to an event at Coventure in Carbondale, a local business incubator where they would meet some fascinating people driven by a passion for creating and growing a business. This non-profit has helped local businesses raise millions of dollars in funding over the past few years and the success of these businesses has been an inspiring testament to the power of a dream.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Shoutouts go to a huge list of all-star folks who have one way or another nudged me towards the mission I now obsess over. My wife, Molly, early on pushed me and supported me in my quest for a more meaningful career, helping me drop my carpenter’s tool bags and pick up the English teacher’s mantle. How exciting to have that kind of encouragement so close at hand. However, my long list of encouragers goes back to my parents, especially Peter Garland who was both a brilliant architect and an inspiring college professor. He passed away long before I took to the classroom yet I know he would be my biggest fan were he around today. A shout out goes to Tom Heald, the principal who hired me in 2000 and gave me my first teaching job. Also, George Stranahan, an educator and entrepreneur who inspired me and supported my search for solutions when I started chafing under the collar of a classroom teacher. John McBride gets a huge shout out as well for his confidence in my teaching ability and willingness to send me and my wife off to distant Africa with a small cohort of students year after year to immerse them in a world full of wonder, strangeness and awe. I’ll stop here but know that I have been wonderfully encouraged and supported at every turn. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to recognize some of the most helpful among them.

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