The Back Forty Shop

Coaching with The Back Forty

The Back Forty Big Game Coaching Session - $197

This deep-dive, 90-minute session is all about the Big Game you're now ready to play in your second half/best half of life. The Back Forty philosophy says that your first half was all simply R & D, research and development, to direct you to what you came here to do and be. Your playful, passionate and purposeful Back Forty begins when you take on the radical notion that it was all perfectly designed to have you be right where you are now, with the conditions exactly as they are, so as to fulfill on the unique purpose you came for. This is your time to go BIG!


You will be able to:


  • Discover and declare the Big Game you're now poised to play
  • Assess the powerful impact of this unique game on your Self and the world
  • Plan to rise above the challenges you'll inevitably face as you step up and out
  • Create ways to bring the spirit of play into all of it. Yes, play...and yes, you can.

Choose Coach Darrell Gurney

  • The founder of The Back Forty and CareerGuy.com
  • The author of Headhunters Revealed! Career Secrets for Choosing and Using Professional Recruiters, winner of the Clarion Award for Best Book and the Amazon bestseller, Never Apply for a Job Again: Break the Rules, Cut the Line, Beat the Rest
  • Certified Personnel Consultant (CPC)
  • Certified Job & Career Transition Coach (JCTC)
  • Certified Career Management Coach (CCMC)
  • Licensed Spiritual Counselor (ALSP, RScP)
  • ICF Certified PCC-Level Coach
  • Damn good guy

Choose Coach Alexandra Levin

  • 20+ Year Human Resources Executive
  • Author of The Back Forty IMBUE Journal
  • Executive Coach
  • Training and Development Expert
  • Management Consultant
  • Co-Founder of The Back Forty INFUSE Program
  • SPHR Certified
  • ICF Certified PCC-Level Coach
  • Awesomely powerful woman

The Back Forty INFUSE Program - $997

Imagine there is way more in you to be expressed and fulfilled.

Imagine and believe that you can restart...or, better yet, really start for the first time!

Consider that the only start that matters is the one you do now, and that life was actually designed that way. Your midlife opportunity is awakening to discover all that you've learned from a first half of R & D (research and development) and capitalizing on it to realize your own uniquely playful, passionate and purposeful second half.

You have yet to do what you came here to do. No matter what has come before -- be it perceived major successes or miserable failures -- as Frank Sinatra sings "The best is yet to come, and babe won't it be fine".

The Back Forty idea is radical. It says that whatever has come before does not determine what comes next. It's about a radical renewing of the mind into belief and action that have you play big. Come discover your Big Game Back Forty Future. It's what you came for.

The Back Forty Re-NEW-ALL - $29.97

Life is chocked full of transitions...both the ones we consciously choose as well as those that hit us like a bag of bricks.

Learning a life transition strategy before the inevitable occurs--or at least now, if it already has--can ensure that everything coming at you gets transformed from lemons into GOLD (forget the lemonade).

Whether it's a relationship shift, a career shift, a health shift, a financial shift, a family shift or any other kind of shift, one thing we know is, as life moves forward, shift happens.

Become adaptable and welcoming of change -- a shift master and transition expert -- so that you can continue to grow bolder and better, not older and fretter.


Develop an attitude of openness to NEW to move you up and out of any old (patterns, habits, relationships, issues, or challenges) you may be experiencing.

A change-based mindset and strategy allows for you to play Big Games again, or for the first time.

Through 5 Modules, 90 minutes of insightful content, and engaging, downloadable Homeplay exercises, you'll be able to take any slings and arrows life has dealt you and come out bolder and better...becoming who you came in this lifetime to be to do what you came in this lifetime to do.

Books

IMBUE Journal:

Inspiring Massive Beauty Uniquely Expressed

The IMBUE Journal invites you on an inward journey to create and play a meaningful and vibrant game of Inspiring Massive Beauty Uniquely Expressed – by YOU and as YOU. Through loving, step-by-step guidance and insight-provoking questions, this wise companion provides a framework and support for accepting, embracing, and empowering your beautiful essence. 


  • Discover the four environments that shape your experience of yourself, and learn how to design them
  • Infuse your life with the spirit of play, and notice how it lightens up your projects
  • Adopt a practice of acknowledging and rewarding yourself for all wins, big and small
  • Engage in supportive practices, rituals, and success strategies
  • Fall in love with yourself all over again!


Join us in this transformational adventure! Create for yourself a Self-captivating experience of true expression, joy, inner and outer beauty, and self-love.

Crisis or Opportunity

This midlife-lemons-to-lemonade edition of the Career Planning & Adult Development Journal is a “love of labor” experience as the participants herein have shared the unfoldment of their higher expressions of career even in the face of (or because of?) the challenges of midlife.

This journal is a compilation of stories offering hope and inspiration to demonstrate that the adversities of life in general, and midlife career in particular, are often the catalyst to the greater role we are here to play.

I invite you to be inspired, moved, healed, motivated, recognized, and appreciated for all of your own overcoming of adversity as you share the experiences of these seven authors. Each expresses powerfully and vulnerably their own unique version of the trials and tribulations we face as we follow from deep within—and often unwittingly—our own urge to emerge into our greater yet to be.


  • In Displaying Entrepreneurism, Christine Henry shares her growth path and inner awakenings from eliminated corporate merchandising supervisor to greater displays of risk and creativity.
  • In Laughing at the Law, Alex Barnett takes us on a journey through the anger, loss and judgmentalness of being a laid off lawyer to the trials and defibrillations of comedy.
  • In Praying the Right Way, Laurie Jankower James shows us how the power of right love in our life—and eliminating the sources of the absence thereof—shapes our choices, experience and expressions of a fuller, joyful career.
  • In Finding Santa, Cliff Snider demonstrates how a layoff and low times can move a hobby-oriented passion onto the front burner of one’s career…and bring childhood joy to many in the process.
  • In Twisting Paths, Donna Merritt offers inspiration to fulfill on those dormant desires and passions from childhood that we often cover up with our more “responsible” task-oriented lives…while, again, showing the power of the right love in one’s life.
  • In Crisis or Opportunity?, I share my own experiences along the midlife road to fuller Self-expression from a career coach and committed single father’s point of view, showing how slings and arrows can be transformed into ploughshares of creativity cultivation.
  • In A Walking Tour of Midlife, Lisa Scalia rounds out our issue with an encouraging experience of stepping out into entrepreneurial no-man’s land on an inspiration, wing and a prayer to combine core passions into one big melting pot of midlife career expression.


A common theme throughout these stories is the growth outward from within of those truest desires, fascinations, and joyful Self-expressions that only get tapped into when the surface life of comfort and convenience gets wracked by the wrecking ball of midlife challenge. The underlying message is that there are goodies on the other side of what we call “midlife crisis” …if we but listen and learn. Enjoy! Share the inspiration! And be empowered to help transform the cultural myth of “midlife crisis” to that of “midlife opportunity.”

The Birth of the Back Forty

Darrell W. Gurney shares his own experiences along the midlife road to fuller self-expression from a career coach and committed single father's point of view, hoeing how slings and arrows can be transformed into plowshares of creativity cultivation.