The Coaches' Corner

Roberto Escalante, President at Pueblo Consulting, joins us on The Coaches' Corner Podcast to discuss his work building, protecting and transferring wealth through small businesses, particularly for minority groups. 

With his experience working for Fortune 500 companies, including Toys R Us and McDonald's, Escalante has developed valuable knowledge he can share with the small business community. He targets entrepreneurs of color, women and veteran-owned businesses with his services, offering management consulting and financial advisory services. 

His heart for helping these communities grew from his experiences working as a Latino professional in large corporations where he was often one of few Latinos, giving him a sense of loneliness that he aims to counter.

Life coach Arsemiris Galva joins us on The Coaches' Corner podcast, sharing her journey towards becoming a life coach and the importance of relationships in her coaching.

Having accomplished all the traditional markers of success, including degrees and the "American Dream," Galva began to question if there was more to life than just checking boxes. This led her to become a life coach, specializing in helping women business owners and ministry leaders heal from past hurts, including toxic relationships.

Galva's work is informed by her own experiences of being in a toxic marriage, which she came to understand as rooted in her childhood. She sees her work as a way of bringing healing and hope to women’s lives.

Alyssa Poggioli is a certified Life Coach passionate about helping others truly live their most authentic lives. After spending ten years managing corporate fitness centers, Alyssa noticed a common element in all the conversations she was having with her clients.  

Most of us can probably attest to feeling, at times, like we’re stuck on a hamster wheel. Maybe the stresses of work inspire us to join gyms to work out our frustrations or maybe we take out that stress in other ways like eating or alcohol.

“People in middle management and up had this underlying lack of support, feeling resentful, lonely, under-supported and really just wanting to focus on the physical element of who they are.

They would come down and bust ass on the treadmill and in classes but then they would still feel this lack of connection and being overwhelmed with how they felt with their life. So my original intention in becoming certified as a coach was to bring it within the organizations that I was already managing.”

Much of the underlying issues, she noticed, came from a lack of intention. People weren’t connecting or recognizing their core values. She explains how in any coaching practice, the first step is helping someone get clear on what it is they actually want. 

“Who are you being? What's working, what's not working? What do you want? And then getting clear and solidifying what those values are.”

It’s common for us as human beings to go through life on autopilot not paying much attention to the things we say or do and if those are truly aligning to what we deem to be our core values. As Alyssa puts it, “It's really about the ability to be able to connect to yourself, be aware of and take ownership of what you are thinking.”

A big tell on how you’re living your life is your ability to be playful. “Children up until the age of three are beautiful because they only can live from a space of intuition and exploration and innocence.” 

If any of this resonates with you and sounds familiar, Alyssa may be able to help get you on the track to living your best, most authentic life. The most important thing to understand when thinking about coaching, as she puts it, is “if you're not willing to get help. How can you expect someone to help you?”

Tune into this episode of the Coaches Corner podcast to hear more about Alyssa’s approach to coaching and her advice on being more mindful in your life.

It wasn’t until Marcin Lapczynski went through the struggle of his life that he found his purpose. Faced with the end of his marriage, and all the pain that goes along with it, Marcin realized he couldn’t face it alone. With the help of coaches and mentors, he would not only find peace amidst the chaos, but he’d turn his experience into his profession.

Beyond the legal implications of divorce, Marcin learned firsthand that it was the mental and emotional battle that impacts the legal outcome. As he recalls from his experience, he warns of the possible consequences of going at it alone. 

“You need someone to help you with your emotional options, because when you go through a divorce it's a very overwhelming emotional process. It's a rollercoaster that's so difficult and so challenging to do it all on your own. You are so angry, you are so upset at your ex for having to go through this.

There's just so much that is going on and if you cannot think clearly then it's going to cost you thousands of dollars going forward.”

Yet it’s the life that awaits the individual going through a divorce that is often overlooked. Once the process of divorce is over, it marks the beginning of a new life for the individuals involved. 

“What my coach did for me is he extracted my talents and showed me the possibilities. He has shown me the power of living a life that we deserve. He has shown me how to set goals. He has shown me how to remove fear from our lives. How to rebuild yourself.

He has shown me so much and opened up my eyes, so that I am looking at life from a completely different perspective. I am looking at it from a different lens and that's how I have learned how much coaching can do for you; how it can impact others’ lives. Now I am very passionate about transforming people's lives, because there are so many divorced men and women that have already gone through a divorce process or are going through a divorce process and are so emotionally broken.”

Tune in to hear more on Marcin’s personal healing journey and how his experience is helping others dealing with similar situations.

It’s common for people to seek out therapy when they’re unhappy with life or feeling stuck. Not too many seek out coaching. On this episode of the Coaches’ Corner, Life and Health Coach Kendra Thomas talks about how transformative working with a coach can be.

Kendra first became a coach about 12 years ago in Corporate America for a coaching organization focused primarily on self-development and professional development. It was around this time that she started to identify what her life’s mission would be. 

“I was really looking at some of the different things that I was encountering when I was coaching some of these individuals from a professional standpoint. I began to find that there was a lot of unhealed trauma, a lot of unresolved issues that people were facing. And so the reason why they weren't able to show up and do their best at their places of employment or in their current roles is because they hadn't healed from things that had happened in their childhood.”

Putting in the work to dig deep and understand what things you need to do to evolve and grow is never easy. Kendra talks about how at times it’s been difficult when she’s coaching and developing. “It takes a lot of things. It takes a lot of time and you have to hang in there because again, someone is not going to always get the message that you're trying to deliver to them the very first time.”

Dedicating all of your time to helping others become the best version of themselves can take a toll. Kendra shares how she used to be the type of person who never turned their phone off making sure she answered every email and took every call. 

“I had to unplug and I had to learn how to create things in my life to feed my soul. So if I'm not coaching, developing, and doing different things of that nature, I read tons of books, I'm looking at different podcasts. I'm just learning more about my craft, but then also taking time to spend with my family.”

Tune in to this episode of the Coaches’ Corner Podcast and hear more of Kendra’s advice on finding the right coach, how you can identify if you have trauma you haven’t healed from yet, and more. 

As Kendra puts it, wholeness is being able to say “I've healed, I'm healthy. I'm focusing on the things that matter.”

Growing up in Johannesburg South Africa, Rene De Coning witnessed first hand the end of apartheid and sites it as an incredible experience to live through. After moving her family to London for a bit, they made their way to Chicago where they developed such a strong community of friends turned family. 

Rene tells how she went from a life in Corporate America working for an international oil company to coaching countless people through their personal and professional journeys. After leaving the oil industry for several reasons Rene explains further, she was invited to attend a coaching class by a friend and the rest is history. 

Going through her own struggles at the time, attending that coaching program transformed Rene and helped her process and work through some of the tragedies she experienced. 

“I don’t know that I would have had the skills to work through them if I did not firstly have my faith and secondly, have this training in being aware of myself and how I show up and deal with the adversity in my life.”

She goes on to explain the intricacies and behind the scenes of the world of coaching and how the governing bodies of “coaching” work. She gives a recommendation to those looking for a coach: “ find somebody that has a certification because you know that they have training and that they have a model and a structure under which they work that determines the ethics, the values and the eventual outcomes for people.” As someone who has coached with and without an education, Rene will be the first to tell you that there is definitely a difference; the education has made her a much better coach to her clients. 

Listen in as Ree talks about shifting energies, the foundations of the IPEC coaching model she practices, and more.