MEET THE MAPMAKER
Hi, I’m Robyn Straley. I’m a coach, a geographer, and a maker of imaginary maps. I’m also the founder of 30kft Coaching. Welcome.
I have always loved maps. The real ones taught me about landscapes, rivers, and how the world is shaped over time. But it was the imaginary ones, tucked into the front pages of books, that stopped me in my tracks. Someone had made a map of a place that did not exist. That felt like magic. It still does.
Maps are never only about places. They are about people, patterns, and the journeys we make together.
Over time, my fascination with landscapes became a language for navigating the human experience. Every map is an invitation to tell a story, and every map begins with paying attention.
From that way of seeing, I developed the practice of Inner Cartography, an approach to coaching rooted in pattern, place, and story. The process is not about fixing yourself. It is about noticing what already exists, seeing how it fits together, and learning to trust the compass within. Clarity comes not as pressure, but as peace. At its center is the belief that stories are how humans orient, not with data but with meaning. Stories are the connective tissue between experience and understanding. Each client discovers their natural storytelling mode, and that becomes their navigational language.
When people work with me, they find a guide who listens differently. They are seen and heard in a way that allows them to claim authorship of their own story. Together, we set aside the maps that no longer serve and begin to chart new ones. Clients learn to ask themselves better questions, to tell better stories, and to see the waypoints that lead them forward. The next step reveals itself, not as pressure, but as clarity.
I believe in presence and companionship, in walking together rather than going alone. I place high value on honoring the sources that shape us. I believe in joy as a compass and in practice as the way we deepen whatever we are called to do. Above all, I believe in holding space that allows people to be deeply seen, deeply heard, and deeply encouraged.
These beliefs are expressed in the way I coach, through maps, stories, and the steady work of paying attention. I help creative types, visual learners, and neurodiverse thinkers map the landscapes of their inner worlds and discover paths that lead them home to themselves. My clients include weary travelers who need boundaries, compass seekers who crave values, fogbound explorers looking for waypoints, and edge-dwellers standing at the precipice. Each of them finds clarity not by being told what to do, but by becoming their own mapmaker.
The same principles that guide my work guide my life. I live my life as an appreciative audience, bearing witness with curiosity and delight. My dogs remind me daily to pay attention to small joys. My bookshelves remind me that I will never finish reading. And maps, real or imaginary, continue to remind me that exploration is both the work and the reward.
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
- Mary Oliver
To chart a life is to listen for its hidden geography.