Hidden Gems: Meet Jon Kohrs of Fresh Eggs

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jon Kohrs of Fresh Eggs, and facilitator for Orion Retreats.

Hi Jon, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
In my mid-20s, I was getting my Masters in marketing, and I had this professor I liked who was a great storyteller.

She shared a story in one class that really left an impression on me. It was about a man walking down a dirt road in Iowa somewhere. It was bright outside and sunny, and he started thinking, I want some eggs for breakfast. Gosh, that would taste good, he thought. He sees this sign on the left, and it’s this perfectly pristine, white sign with perfectly stenciled lettering, “Fresh Eggs.” It was perfectly straight on this metal post, just very crisp and clean. The man thinks, hmm, those seem like decent fresh eggs.

He decides to keep walking. He stumbles upon another sign on the right, made of old barn wood, nailed on a wood post all crooked and jaggedy. Written on it again is “Fresh Eggs”, the paint still wet and dripping a little. The man thinks, hmm, those could be really good eggs as well. At the end of the story, the professor asks, which eggs did he buy? It’s not really about marketing. It’s about the birds, the sun, the dirt road, and all the little things that create an experience for someone to be immersed in. And it’s about him and his psyche. And I thought, Fresh Eggs, what a brilliant, perfect name for a company.

A few years later, I was at SXSW, and something came out of nowhere and hit me. I literally dropped to my knees and started crying. I ran back to my hotel room and bought the domain name, fresheg.gs. The domain was a devotion to a un dot com way to run a company.

So that was the origin of Fresh Eggs. It’s evolved from building websites to developing a content strategy, running usability tests, conducting customer ethnography, designing products teaching teams design thinking, to developing leadership training. At its heart, it’s always been an experienced firm. And then, I began to understand it more and the deeper tug to help people change how they work and how they create experiences for others. Fresh Eggs has been this internal incubator ever since that really helps people do their inner work and design higher states of awareness into the products they create for the rest of the world. And that’s what Fresh Eggs does.

My short pitch is I design incubators to help people hatch their whole new way. Wholeness is really about them finding who they really, really are inside.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I’m sure the universe gave me a smooth road; I just don’t listen very well!

Each year I see a little bit more of the picture, and I keep getting sent interesting opportunities to teach organizations, build accelerators, or use the Enneagram to help do coaching. Every year, more seasoning gets added to Fresh Eggs. I don’t know what it is supposed to taste like, but maybe someday I will.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Fresh Eggs?
I think what most people say I do is design employee experiences. And those people would say these experiences are workshops, retreats, and experiential curricula. I offer things like a 3-month leadership institute, where leaders get to explore how to rethink the future of their business. I also facilitate 2-week design sprints for teams to develop radically new products. It’s really an experience to learn by doing, ultimately getting leaders and teams to work in a whole new way.

I think underneath that, what I do well is create experiences where people feel seen and feel known. The Enneagram is the foundation of that, and it’s a map that allows people to have a language to talk to each other about who they really are and who they aren’t. I think that’s really different from the vast parade of personality assessments littering the corporate cultosphere. It’s not like, hey, because you’re this, then you should keep doing these things, which is what most companies I find do. Most of the things they tell people to do are actually things that people don’t want to do. That’s part of their suffering. So the Enneagram can weave in as a way to design out the suffering in an employee’s experience.

Underneath all that are energy practices, how to read energy, and how to use Reiki to help people relax and feel more open to a new way of being. Energy is the foundation, and the Enneagram is the platform and a map. The curriculum layers on top of that as an instructional medium.

This year, I’ve partnered with Orion Retreats, a retreat company owned by my good friend Lauren Dickinson (www.orionretreats.com) to offer Enneagram Immersion Retreats. Doing the work I do in a retreat format is different in that it’s not just teaching you how to work differently, but experiencing within yourself a whole new way of being. I think teams doing the retreats will hatch a whole new way of being together. If you’re an individual, you’ll hatch a whole new way to be with yourself. If you’re a couple, you’ll hatch a whole new way of being in a relationship. I also think what’s different is that these retreats are intentionally designed around an out-of-the-normal experience and in a way to explore your inner world.

For instance, if there were more body types that came, the experience would be shifted to one of relaxation and space for the body to move. We don’t often get to do that in a corporate setting where we are stuck on zoom calls and in office chairs. So the entire experience is designed around who people are and to facilitate their head opening, heart opening, or body opening. It’s always unique and customized, so I think that’s also different than the normal Fresh Eggs experience, and your average retreat experience.

What do you think about happiness?
I like playing. I don’t think I always got to play as a kid, so I think part of my own healing is to learn how to play. Creating these retreats and doing them is like getting a weekend family I get to play with, create with, and go deep with. That brings me a lot of joy, and it’s very healing.

Pricing:

• Group Retreat – $1,497 per person (Teams welcome)
• Early Bird $997 (60+ Days Advance Registration)
• Couples $2,497 (per couple)

Contact Info:

• Website: KansasCity.fresheg.gs
• Instagram:  www.instagram.com/fresheggskc
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/fresheggs

Image Credits
Orion Retreats