A COACHING AGENCY BUILT UPON
Being,
and Generosity.
Community,
We exist to walk with leaders who are running hard and need someone steady alongside them.
We believe leadership is human before it is strategic. The condition of the leader affects the condition of the work. That is why our coaching begins beneath the surface — with the practices that help leaders return to steadiness, wisdom, and wholeness.
Seek First consists of a carefully selected network of experienced coaches ready to serve your team. Following a personal interview, we thoughtfully match each client with the coach best suited to their needs, goals, and leadership journey.
Prioritize Being
Seek first to rest, listen, and understand.
Most leaders have learned to lead from the outside in — from what the role demands, what the calendar requires, what others expect. The state of their interior life becomes secondary to the state of their output.
We believe that order is backwards — and costly.
So we build it in two directions.
We begin every coaching engagement beneath the surface — with rest, listening, and understanding as the foundational disciplines. Not as warmup before the real work. As the real work. A leader who cannot rest cannot hear clearly. A leader who cannot listen cannot understand what is actually happening. A leader who cannot understand themselves will eventually be undone by what they haven't noticed.
And we help leaders build these practices into their own lives. Not as productivity habits, but as a way of being — a posture of seeking first that shapes how they lead their teams, make decisions, and show up for the people depending on them.
The goal is not a leader who performs better. It is a leader who leads from a healthier, more integrated center.
The state of the leader shapes the quality of the leadership.
Prioritize Community
We walk with leaders, and we help leaders learn to walk with others.
Leadership was never meant to be carried alone.
And yet most leaders find themselves there — isolated by responsibility, careful about what they say and to whom, until the isolation becomes normal. Normalized isolation is one of the most dangerous conditions a leader can be in.
We believe community is not a luxury for leaders. It is a condition for lasting, healthy leadership.
So we build it in two directions.
We walk alongside every leader we coach — through point coach relationships, specialist guidance, and pilgrimage-based experiences. Coaching at its best is sustained companionship over time, not episodic advice for the presenting problem.
And we help leaders build their own constellation of support — honest relationships with a spouse, a peer, a mentor, a trusted friend. Leaders who walk with others make better decisions, catch their blind spots sooner, and carry less alone.
The goal is not to become indispensable to the leader. It is to help them become the kind of leader who knows how to walk with others.
Coaching is companionship. Leadership is community
Prioritize Generosity
Becoming a river of gold to our people.
Most leaders have been formed by scarcity — of time, of margin, of capacity. The result is leadership that protects, hoards, and manages from a posture of not-enough. It affects how they lead their teams, how they invest in people, and how much of themselves they actually bring to the work.
We believe generosity is not what leaders do when they have extra. It is how healthy leaders lead.
So we build it in two directions.
This agency exists to be a river of gold to everyone connected to it — coaches who are compensated well and formed deeply, leaders who receive more than a service, organizations whose people are healthier for the coaching investment, and communities that carry the overflow of leaders who have learned to give from fullness rather than depletion.
And we coach leaders toward generosity in their own sphere — generous toward themselves through rest, toward their teams through listening, toward their organizations through understanding, toward the people they lead through presence rather than performance.
The goal is a leader whose influence creates life in the people and places around them.
We become a river of gold to our people.
Meet the Leadership Team
Founder & Executive Leadership Coach
Adam G Fleming
Adam has coached leaders across the globe in corporate and NGO settings since 2007. Beyond 1 on 1 executive coaching, his experience includes curriculum development and training leaders to improve their listening skills. He has led workshops on-site in locations such as D.R. Congo and Egypt, as well as virtually with groups in Syria and the Middle East, Latin America, and Europe.
Adam firmly believes that everything we do well stems from being well-rested. His aim with the Seek First project is to invite people into a space where they can excel by seeking first to rest, listen, and be generous as an extension of gratitude.
Adam is married with four children and one daughter-in-law. He enjoys hiking the Camino and traveling, and spends a good deal of his spare time coaching high school distance runners. Executives have described Adam as "the friendliest guy I've met" and "the most down to earth person I know."
Co-founder & Ministry/Nonprofit Coach
Dustin Kleinschmidt
Dustin brings more than twenty-five years of experience in vocational ministry, serving in pastoral and executive leadership across churches of different sizes, stages, and contexts. Throughout those years, much of his work has centered on developing leaders, building healthy teams, coaching pastors and ministry staff, and helping people navigate the complexity that comes with leading in the local church.
His coaching is shaped as much by the hard parts of ministry as the successful ones. Dustin knows the weight leaders carry, the blind spots that can develop over time, and the slow erosion that often happens long before anyone calls it burnout. He helps leaders pay attention to what is happening beneath the surface, tell the truth about what they are carrying, and develop healthier ways of living and leading for the long haul.
Dustin approaches coaching as a companion rather than an expert, bringing lived and reflected experience into honest conversations with pastors and church planters across the whole picture of health — spiritual, emotional, relational, and organizational. His goal is to help leaders grow holistically, integrating every part of who they are in ways that foster freedom and flourishing through every season.
He is also the author of The Wilderness Way: Finding Freedom in Life’s Fractures and writes and teaches about faith, formation, leadership, and learning to live well in a complicated life.
Co-founder & Brand Coach
Keith Locke
Keith has spent nearly three decades helping people and organizations find clarity around who they are, what they are called to do, and how to communicate it well. His career has crossed branding, creative direction, organizational strategy, ministry, and coaching, giving him a unique perspective on both the person and the larger story they are living and leading.
Much of Keith’s work begins beneath the surface. He believes the presenting problem is not always the real problem, and that clarity often comes from slowing down long enough to ask better questions. His approach is rooted in listening — helping leaders quiet the noise, notice what may have been overlooked, and reconnect with the values, convictions, and calling shaping what comes next.
As a coach and strategist, Keith helps people see how life, leadership, faith, and work belong together — and how greater alignment can lead to healthier decisions and more meaningful work.
At the heart of Keith’s work is a simple practice: before rushing toward answers, strategies, or outcomes, there is wisdom in learning to pause, listen, and pay attention. Oftentimes, the most important step forward is not a step at all, but seeking first, stillness.
A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO THE COACHING EXPERIENCE
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Less choosing. More coaching.
Many coaching agencies give leaders a collection of coach profiles and ask them to choose—adding yet another decision to an already full plate. That process can delay the start of coaching by several weeks, consuming valuable time in a six-month engagement.
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We make the match for you.
Instead of asking your leaders to browse profiles, we begin with a one-on-one discovery conversation. We learn about the individual, their goals, challenges, personality, and priorities—then thoughtfully match them with the coach we believe will serve them best. That means less friction and a faster start.
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Our coaches bring everything they know to the table.
Some coaching agencies limit coaches to the agency’s prescribed tools and methodologies. One of our founding coaches, for example, is trained in the Core Values Index (CVI) assessment but was unable to use that expertise with clients referred through other agencies.
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We trust the expertise of our coaches.
Our coaches aren’t asked to leave valuable experience, training, tools, or methodologies at the door. We select accomplished professionals and expect them to draw from the full breadth of what they’ve learned to help each client move forward.
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You don’t just get a coach. You gain access to a coaching team.
Traditional coaching models often assign one coach and expect that individual to address virtually every need. We believe no single coach needs to be an expert in everything.
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Think point guard, not one-person team.
Your primary coach serves much like a point guard in basketball: capable of leading the play, but always looking for the best opportunity to distribute the ball. When another coach has deeper expertise in an area—whether personal finance, physical wellness, operations, leadership, or another specialty—your coach can bring that expertise into the relationship. Instead of being limited by the capabilities of one coach, you benefit from the collective strength of the entire agency.