Changeyourlife – Entrepreneur Diary of a Life Coach
Change begins with self; while it can be messy in the middle, the final result is beautiful. Before we talk about change, we must be willing to accept to change for the better. For some, they can do it on their own, but for others, they may need a little bit of hand-holding before they’re ready to take flight. In such cases, getting the help of a Life Coach can truly help you in many ways.
We caught up with Ashima Gupta, the founder of Changeyourlife about her entrepreneurial journey from a lawyer to a life coach. Ashima is an ICF Certified Personal Success and Career Coach and founder of Changeyourlife Coaching services where she has a team of Internationally Certified Coaches working in the field of Women Empowerment, Career Coaching, Executive Coaching, Business coaching and wellness coaching.
The Lifestyle Portal is happy to share her entrepreneurial journey of how she’s making a difference one individual at a time by empowering them through coaching. Take a look…
What inspired to start Changeyourlife?
After having successfully practised as a lawyer for almost five years, she took a break for family reasons. It was during this period she discovered her natural flair and passion for coaching and empowering others to come out of their challenges and make forward movement in their lives. This led her to discover that there exists an international body which certifies Coaches, and then she completed her coaching course and certification from the ICF, USA. Since then there has been no looking back and she further enhanced her skills with Law of Attraction and NLP courses during her new found career.
As Ashima explains, “I saw that women have immense potential and the talent to create huge professional success in their career as well as business and entrepreneurship. They have big dreams too and they aspire to do a lot, but due to the lack of proper support, self-imposed limitations, false conditioning and lack of a structured plan to work towards their goals, they are unable to accomplish the success they desired. This lead to the birth of my company ‘Changeyourlife’ where I along with my team of internationally certified coaches work to support women looking to venture into entrepreneurship or scale up their existing businesses, those wanting to progress faster in their careers in the corporate and those looking to get back to their career but unable to do so. We support them not only to reach their professional goals but also overcome challenges in their personal life including relationships, health and happiness and peace of mind.”
At ‘Changeyourlife’ her mission is to empower every woman to uncover and unleash her best potential in the truest form and harness it in the direction of growth, success and happiness. She believes that every individual is whole and complete and has the full potential to achieve that they desire…..what is missing is the know how as to how to access that potential and certain skills that are needed to be successful; and this is where Ashima and her team help to bridge this gap with their coaching tools and techniques!
Initial investments made
“The first investment was a big one estimating to around 1.5 lacs, which was to complete my International Coach Certification from the ICF, the only authorised organisation in the USA, to certify coaches worldwide. After that, there was a basic investment for setting up, branding and advertising the business. An added cost is incurred whenever I conduct workshops, which include the handouts and visual presentations etc.,” explains Ashima.
Also as her profession demands constant up gradation of knowledge and supplementation with various tools and techniques, hence most of the investment is on completing additional courses for knowledge and skill enhancement. The best part of the coaching profession is that most of the Coaching is done over Skype or phone calls post the initial conversation or preliminary meeting with the potential client. Hence her investments also included procuring a good laptop and getting an Internet connection.
The best part being, in the last two years, Ashima has not only recovered the initial investment but the company is now churning profits as well. This is because she feels that people in India have now begun to understand how a coach can help them. They’re also now ready and open to engaging in professional help and support of a Coach to achieve their goals and move towards their success faster.
Branding
“Well, the whole idea behind my Coaching is to transform an individual’s life both personally and professionally. The transformation is a positive and progressive one hence it redefines the way you lead your life. This is what gave birth to the name of my company…’Changeyourlife’ and my company literally lives up to its name!” smiles Ashima.
In her line of work, Ashima has come across a lot of people are not happy with their job, or how their career/business is moving and given an option would want to change their situation. Since the name is so self-explanatory and somewhere touches the deep desire of every person who wants to change their current situation/circumstances, people relate well to it. So it just took her a few seconds to zero down on the name of her company and they deliver more than what they promise.
Challenges faced
The biggest challenge Ashima admits that she has faced is to explain to people what Coaching is and how it can help them. Though awareness has increased over time still many people are not aware of it and often confuse it with Counselling.
As she explains, “A coach is different from a counsellor. A counsellor will advise you on the basis of his/her knowledge and what he/she believes to be true. The advice may not go with an individual and he/she may fail to take the advised steps. But a Coach works on the foundation that every individual is unique and hence the requirement of each individual are different from the other. A Coach works by bringing clarity and creating an action plan by basing it on the individual’s personal foundation. You are much more likely to take steps which adhere to your belief system, aren’t you? A coach also works on the challenges that are stopping the individual from taking the required actions and works on to eradicating and changing the root cause.”
Clients at Changeyourlife
Her major clients are mostly women either looking to get back to work, foray into entrepreneurship, expand and grow their business and professionals stuck in their careers, lacking clarity on which way to go and want to make a forward movement.
Some other clients have been majorly the women entrepreneur groups like a ‘Queen – work from home’ and ‘Women Who Win’ where we conduct talks, seminars and workshops on skills needed to be successful and happy.
She further explains, “As I said earlier, most of the people are not happy in their current professional situation and are longing to make a breakthrough in their career as well as business. When people are not able to change their situation, which they no longer want and are unable to achieve their career/business goals and targets, they seek the support of a life coach to reach their desired goals.”
Some of the common challenges most clients are going through when they come to her are:
- They are not able to generate the finances they want from their job/business
- They do not have clarity what to do… continue in a job or start their own venture
- They lack direction in life
- They’re always struggling to complete pending tasks and always short on time.
- They find themselves overburdened with responsibilities.
- The fear of unknown, fear to take risk, fear of loss and fear of failure in the future
- Low self-esteem and lack of self-belief
How does Coaching work?
Coaching typically consists of a series of one on one session between the coach and the client, usually lasting 60-75 minutes each. The client and coach connect over a Skype/phone call once a week to meet for these sessions. In the first one or two sessions, the coach will go over your goals to set clear sustainable targets establishing what you truly want to achieve in your professional life.
“We also have certain assessments to help the client get a clear picture of all areas of his/her life and where he/she is currently versus where he/she wants to be in the near future. This helps in creating absolute clarity on what the client wants to achieve and then we help in developing a personalised plan for the client, keeping in mind their strengths and values, to achieve the desired outcome. Every week the coach sets some specific action steps which you with your coach identify as being the most important things to be done in order to move closer to your goals,” mentions Ashima.
By making a commitment to your coach you are not only focussed on the most important tasks to achieve your goals, but you also have someone who will hold you accountable to make sure you are constantly following through and not giving up midway. Along with this, the coach works on the basic skill sets that are needed but missing in order to help you achieve your goals faster. The coach also works on the challenges/ obstacles that you encounter during this journey towards your goals and helps you to overcome the same with the help of coaching tools and techniques so as to facilitate free flow towards your goals.
Commitment, accountability and follow through are some of the most valuable components of the coaching process and they are a big reason why people who work with a Coach to make more progress than they do when they work alone.
Anyone and everyone who is willing to make a Change and work towards achieving the desired outcome whether in professional or personal life can opt for a coach. People who work with a coach have nothing wrong with them, they are people doing well in their career/business but they aspire to do better and become the Best at the earliest without wasting time! Working with a coach not only leads you to achieve your goals but also makes your journey shorter, smoother and faster. Though the process seems to focus on the professional area of an individual’s life, the benefits are more than visible in their personal life too.
How Coaching helps?
Ashima further explains, “The coaching profession follows complete confidentiality hence cannot share specific examples, but all of my clients @ Changeyourlife have ended up much more happy, successful in achieving the goals they wanted to and satisfied. So there have been individuals who after having worked in the corporate world for 16 years realised that they were not happy doing what they were and wanted to venture into their own start up but were confused and fearful of taking the plunge due to financial security. Coaching engagement helped them to not only get a clear vision of what they wanted but also helped them achieve their target of setting up a successful venture and transform their fears and limiting beliefs to empowering ones that will help them sustain the momentum of growth and success in the future.”
There has been a category of clients where women have given up their career and now wanting to get back to a second innings in their professional life but not wanting to go back to the same work. The coaching engagement helped them to be clear on what they truly wanted to do based on their strengths and interest, supported them to take the necessary steps to do that provide a powerful action plan and overcome issues of low self-confidence, fear of failure and rejection and develop the correct attitude and essential skills to manage their time more productively
Another set of clients has been women entrepreneurs who have set up a business line but are unable to grow their business to reach new heights which they want it to. The coaching engagement with ‘Changeyourlife’ helped them to uncover what were the missing links to create a successful business and upgrade them with the necessary skill set and information.
“At the same time, we could focus on their strengths and use them appropriately to scale up the business. The women entrepreneurs also benefitted immensely by overcoming their self-imposed limitations to a larger extent and boldly taking the required actions for scaling up their business turnover. The same was the benefits experienced by women in the corporate sector who were not getting the required growth in their job/career,” adds Ashima.
In fact, some of the most famous and successful business leaders, sports person and celebrities have a Life Coach to work with them in order to be successful. Some international personalities include Oprah Winfrey, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Serena Williams, Metallica (famous band), Leonardo Di Caprio, Bill Clinton and Andre Agassi.
How has the response been so far…
“The response has been tremendous. As I said this is something, which almost every individual needs and wants so once they understand how it can help them, it clicks well with them. The journey has been very interesting as dealing with different individuals has widened my horizon and added to my experience. I realise that no two clients, even if they seem to be facing similar challenges and having similar goals are actually same! Each one is a different case for me altogether. And this is where we learnt to respect their individuality. From the time I launched ‘changeyourlife’ and until today, there has been a journey of immense learning, growth and satisfaction for being in a profession where I can help Change lives for the better,” signs off Ashima.
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