IAM822- Coach Uses Ontological Coaching Method to Help Her Clients

Intro 0:02
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you’ve come to the right place, Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you’re in search of. This is the I am CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29
Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh for me, I am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. f Christina Rowland, Christina Rowland, Christina rolling consulting. com. Christina is awesome to have you on the show.

Christina Rowland 0:41
Hi, thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:44
No problem. Super excited to have you on as well. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Christina so you hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Christina is a Life and Leadership coach, a fitness industry consultant in a group fitness instructor. She uses an Ontological Coaching method to help her clients create the lives that they have always dreamed of having. Christina is an advocate for those with alopecia and uses her platform to connect with and support others who are experiencing hair loss. Christina, are you ready to speak to the imcl? community?

Christina Rowland 1:12
Yeah, super excited.

Gresham Harkless 1:14
Awesome. Let's do it. So I know I session a little bit when I read your bio, but I wanted to hear a little bit more on how you got started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story? And we'll let you get started with it. Awesome. Make sure working on.

Christina Rowland 1:25
Yeah, absolutely. So I I have a very unique background, I'd say I went to University of Maryland and undergrad and got my degree in kinesiology. And then I studied in China for a year. And then I got my master's in international economics at Johns Hopkins. And from there, I went into government consulting, working for Price Waterhouse Coopers and when I got that job, I thought it was my dream job. I thought that I was going to be set for life, I had achieved what my parents and people around me had to find a success my whole life. And I was like, You know what, I'm going to make partner and die here, I did it. I'm ready to go. And I hated that job. And it didn't take me long to figure that out. Um, but I definitely felt pretty lost after that thinking, you know, like, I thought this is what success is supposed to be, I thought I was supposed to be happy and like, Is this all but life is just like working for someone else. And not like being able to do things the way I see them and also is very unfulfilling. Like I didn't feel like I was making an impact on anyone personally, or anything like that. So I struggled with that for a while. And, um, unfortunately, about three years ago, my mom passed away very suddenly. And as that does for many people, it forced me to reflect on my life and made me think about, you know, I've been so unhappy here for so long, why am I still staying here. So I took a little bit of time to make sure that I was not doing anything out of just my emotions or anything like that. And about six months later, I quit my job with no real plan. So, um, from there, I toyed with different ideas, I went back into fitness full time, because that's what I did in undergrad and wasn't really sure where I wanted to go. And I started sharing my story on Instagram and started just, you know, telling about what my experience of grief was. My experience of alopecia was what all these different things, and someone reached out to me who's now a good friend, and it was actually my coach for a little bit, but it was like, hey, let's grab coffee, and have you ever wanted to be a life coach, because I think you'd be great at it. And so from there, basically, the rest is history, I joined this life coaching program called accomplishment coaching. I'm certified by the International coach Federation. And I went through a year long training program to become a life coach. And it was definitely the best decision I've ever made. completely changed my life personally, and, and professionally. Of course, as I started my business was in the program. And now I'm on the other side of that program, as well as a leader on the team coaching other coaches and teaching them how to be coaches as well. So it's been really incredible and it's everything I could have ever wanted. owning my own business and impacting people on a daily basis and being able to work for myself, create my own hours prevent schedule, and it's just really it's really been great.

Gresham Harkless 4:26
Awesome, awesome as well. I'm definitely obviously Sorry to hear you know about your mom. But I'm glad at least like you were able to kind of take that time to kind of reflect and be able to kind of understand if I'm exactly where I want to be in Do I really enjoy the shop and it sounds like and definitely correct me if I'm wrong. I often believe sometimes when we're in bad experiences or in less than ideal experiences, maybe have a grasp better way to say when we get to where we truly want to be we feel fulfilled. It really magnifies that so much more because you really get to understand both sides of the coin so to speak.

Christina Rowland 4:56
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I would do anything to help My mom back. But I definitely feel really lucky to be where I am now that that drove me to make a change. And then I was in stay where I was.

Gresham Harkless 5:11
Yeah, absolutely. And that makes so much sense. And, and I know you touched on it a little bit with, you know what you're doing with for clients? Can you drill down a little bit deeper? Let us know exactly like how you support the clients and what exactly that process sometimes looks like?

Christina Rowland 5:24
Yeah, absolutely. So I mostly do one on one, live coaching, I do some group coaching as well. But my clients generally come to me with a host of different things that they want to work on in their lives. But my, what I truly believe is that almost everything comes down to self love, and believing that you are worthy and capable of having and accomplishing anything that you want. Almost every client I've ever had, has had a lack of that in some area, even if they don't think that they do. There's some story that they that's been ingrained in them, since they were young that has been telling them that they aren't capable of achieving what they actually want. So they unknowingly settle for something lesser than and then they're left unhappy, left unfulfilled, and they don't feel like they can get out of that. So and that can be anything from relationships to career to fitness to anything just about anything. So generally, I meet with my clients once a week for an hour. And we really just talk, we have a conversation, they bring a coaching request every week, and it's whatever they want to work on, it could be something broad to let for, like, I want to work on a career change to something small, like I had a fight with a friend. And I want to talk specifically about that and get through that. So it could be a range of things, but we just talk through the hour. And I asked them pointed questions in order to get to the root of everything. And we really drill it down to understand what's actually going on underneath the surface there. And from there, we co create practices together for them to bring it to their week. So it'll never be something like they are completely resistant to we try to make it so that both of us agree upon the actions taking going forward. But generally, it could be anything from just noticing where situation or feeling comes up in their life to the actual action, like journaling or going out and doing something or talking to someone, whatever is actually going to help move their goals forward. So yeah, and I generally work for work with clients for about six months, if not more. And it's really really awesome. Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 7:31
Nice. Yeah, absolutely love that. And I've actually been to some accomplishment coaching, I guess, classes or something or events. And it's really a phenomenal program. And I think that really understanding what kind of stuck out to me was that word co create, because I think so many times and definitely correct me if I'm wrong, when you're able to kind of drill down and understand what exactly might be the underlying, I don't want to say issue. But whatever can help the person get to where they want to be. A lot of times, people forget that the coach provides an opportunity for you to kind of be coached up in order to execute those problems. And it's not something that you just have to do X, Y and Z is something that's co created in the UK and our partner and what it is that they want to accomplish.

Christina Rowland 8:10
Yeah, absolutely. We try to make sure it's always something that comes from both sides, if not even just instigated by the client. And because and we also we also never call it homework, right? Because we all have some that can be a very disempowering story for many people, you know, whatever your relationship was in school, whether it was that you hated homework, whether it was that you feel like you need to do it perfectly in order to please the coach, like, we all have something around that idea of homework. And this is really not something that I'm going to scold anyone on or like be upset with my clients work, if they're resisting what we're trying to work on. Like, we're going to get to the root of that, too. Like, why are you resisting it? Why didn't you want to do it? Let's figure that out. And so that's why it's very intentionally supposed to be something that the client feels empowered about, and that they feel like they can accomplish. So

Gresham Harkless 8:58
yeah, absolutely. And I think what resonated with me too, is that she talked about the idea of kind of self love, because I think that is a quote, or a phrase in thinking Grow Rich, where it says, most of the issues I guess, sometimes people have is at the root of it is self confidence. And a lot of times we forget, or we kind of maybe zoom over the fact that how important that is. So I love that you really touched and brought that to light because I think that self love, self appreciation, all those things. Sometimes we can beat ourselves out worst in the world in at moments.

Christina Rowland 9:31
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 9:33
Awesome. So I want to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce, and this could be for you personally, or your business or combination of both. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Christina Rowland 9:42
I think, well this type of coaching in general. I think what sets it apart is how we do like I said, get to the root of the problems and actually try to understand the whys underneath. I think when some people think of life coaching in general, they think of someone coming around, tell them do this. Do that don't do this, don't do that. This is how you get organized, this is what you need to do to succeed, that kind of thing or read a self help book or whatever it is. And I relate to it as kind of like, if someone wants to lose weight, for example, you can tell them here, eat this exercise X amount of times do these exercises. But if they don't actually change the way that they relate to their body, the way that they relate to food, the way they relate to exercise, like the resistance to all that if you don't actually change any of those relationships, they could stop a few weeks down the road and completely revert or just not keep going, right. And so it's the same thing with anything in your life, you need to actually be able to understand what's going on, and why you're having so many problems changing XYZ behavior, in order for it to actually stick and make a change. So I think that's what really sets this type of coaching apart. And me personally, and I think one is my emphasis on self love. I think that's like, so huge and so big. And I think that's something that, like I said, goes into every single areas of our lives. And, and then also just the fact that I, I'm very unafraid to call you out. I'd like to, I like to say that my coaching style is very, very much from a place of like, empowered, tough love, like I'm always giving, like, validate how you feel, and always tell you that like it's totally okay, and you like can be who you are, like in the space, but also like, how can you change what moving forward to change what you actually want to happen? Um, so yeah, I think that's to oversimplify it. That's, that's my secret thoughts.

Gresham Harkless 11:40
Absolutely. Appreciate that. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO. Heck. So this could be like an apple book, or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient,

Christina Rowland 11:51
to kind of different things, but very related, I think keeping the same habits in the morning is like one thing that definitely is huge. For me, I use an app called habit minder, which allows me to track the habits that I do every single day. And you can see them like for weeks and months and years at a time what your patterns are like and stuff like that. And you can set timers for if you want to do it for a certain amount of time every day, things like that. But I wake up in the morning, and you know, I do my meditation and some physical therapy exercises for my shoulder and neck and whatever and just kind of set myself up for the day that way. And I tracked everything on my app. But along with that is what something we call like top six priorities for the day. So every night, I'll write down the list of the top six things that I need to accomplish the next day. And the next day I'll and I'll rank them also in order of importance. And the next day, I will start working on the list and try to bang out the first one before I move on to the second one. But if I do get stuck at that first one, and move on to the second one, and allow myself to keep going, and then go back to the first one when I need to or when I feel that I can.

Gresham Harkless 13:02
Awesome, awesome. So now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice, it might be something you would tell the client or be happen to a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Christina Rowland 13:13
I think the one thing that I always remind myself and that I feel like if I'd known when I was younger would have made all the difference is that pretty much nothing that anyone else in this world does is about me. We tend to make other people's actions mean something about us as people, whether it be that person who rejected us that job we didn't get even just like the person on the road flipped us off or whatever. It's pretty much never about you. It's always about the other person.

Gresham Harkless 13:49
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Christina, I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, what's the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote unquote, CEOs on the show. So Christina, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Christina Rowland 14:00
Being a CEO means to me is honestly for me a lot about the little things, I'm definitely out you know, big thing is like being able to make the decisions and being in charge of my own company and my own schedule and stuff like that. But one thing that I always like hated about working for someone else was honestly just eating out of Tupperware every meal and not having control of my schedule in that way, like having to report to someone else and have someone breathing down my neck about where I was when I was, I couldn't come home in the middle the day to like walk my dogs or anything like that, or take a break here or take a break there. And so for me being a CEO is just about that, like the freedom to like, be where I want when I want to be there. Like right now I'm working from Philadelphia, even though I live in DC and it was just like, hey, why not like something different? And so that's what it means to me and that I can like travel and live my life and like and be where I want to be so Yeah,

Gresham Harkless 15:00
Christina, I truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I want to do is pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Christina Rowland 15:13
People can find me on my website, Christina rolan and ch ri STI na r o w Li nd consulting.com I'm also very active on Instagram, you can DM me find me there. Steena short for Christina's my brother's nickname for me. You know, he for my middle name and Roland. Um, and other than that, you know, I didn't talk about it too much. But I am really big advocate for people who are experiencing hair loss, whether you have alopecia or something else going on, I am completely bald. And I started losing my hair when I was a freshman in college and going through that was like, very huge and pretty traumatic for a young woman. So that has definitely been a huge, huge factor in my journey to self love and like understanding how to love myself when I was physically lacking something that the whole world really like talks about and prides themselves on and identifies people with and that looks different from everybody else. So that's been a big part of my life and my journey and I love being able to support other women and men who are experiencing the same thing. So

Gresham Harkless 16:18
thank you so much again, Christina and I hope you have a great rest of this.

Outro 16:22
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