IAM1291- Coach Empowers the High Performing Professional Women

Coach Angela Kerri is a heavyweight in intensive personal development whose personal story of overcoming tragedy has inspired people worldwide. She is an expert in applying powerful holistic principles that allow professional women to thrive during life transitions, re-discover their true purpose, and harness their intuition through her customized signature coaching program. Coach Angela Kerri is a certified holistic life coach for high-performing, professional women who are top-tier experts, entrepreneurs, and executives in their field and is the founder of the InnHERwork Luxury Wellness Retreat.

• CEO Story: After her husband passed away she became a widow at a very young age. Angela turned it into an opportunity to become a catalyst, she lived her purpose of empowering young women.
• Business Service: High-performing professional women that includes the empowering of their whole being. Re-aligning to operate from a place of joy and peace. The program can also be accessed online.
• Secret Sauce: Authenticity. She is the brand. The program was for her in the very first place. The experience was real, having been the first client of the program. Deals with the root issues.
• CEO Hack: Holistic life coach – meditation. Boundaries – coming from a place where you are healed, you understand your mission and vision. You know your territory.
• CEO Nugget: “Flexible in your execution, but firm in your convictions”
• CEO Defined: A leader is aligned with their true authentic self and can promote greatness in others.

Website: www.angelakerri.com

Facebook: CoachAngelaKerri

Instagram: angela_kerri

Linkedin: angela-kerri-ma-ms-1000381b8

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Transcription

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00:22 – Intro 

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, start-ups, 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.

00:49 – Gresham Harkless 

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. I have a very guest on the show today. I have Coach Angela Kerri of angelakerri.com. Coach Angela, it's great to have you on the show.

01:00 – Coach Angela Kerri 

Good to be here. Thank you so much, Gresh.

01:02 – Gresham Harkless 

Yeah. Super excited to have you on. Before we jump into the interview, I wanted to read a little bit more about Coach Angela so you could hear about a little bit of the awesome things that she's working on.

Coach Angela is a heavyweight and intensive personal development whose personal story of overcoming tragedy has inspired people worldwide. She is an expert in applying powerful holistic principles that allow professional women to thrive during life transitions, rediscover their true purpose, and harness their intuition through her customized signature coaching programs.

Coach Angela Kerri is a certified holistic life coach for high-performing professional women who are top-tier experts, entrepreneurs, and executives in their fields and is the founder of the InnHERwork Luxury Wellness Retreat.

Coach Angela, super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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01:49 – Coach Angela Kerri 

I am. I'm excited. Thank you.

01:51 – Gresham Harkless 

I appreciate you. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit. Hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

01:58 – Coach Angela Kerri 

Yeah. So, it's to make it quick and short. I think that a lot of times when we experience transitions in our life, it really can be a catalyst to kind of realign us to our broader and more holistic purpose. And so for me, that catalyst was my husband, my late husband's sickness.

So he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, which is a form of brain cancer, which is very deadly, 1% survival rate. And that whole experience of dealing with that sickness and, kind of coming to terms with the fact that I would be a widow at a young age, raising my three daughters on my own.

It really gave me a chance to kind of think about the things that I was very passionate about, which were, empowering young women, and professional women, as well as kind of navigating the world and navigating the professional space that could be highly competitive.

And so, a lot of people don't know, but I'm starting to share this now that I am currently an officer, a CIA officer, that's transitioning out, to do my coaching full time.

But that coupled with what I went through personally while navigating that terrain, I think provides me with a pretty unique perspective on how to help women through various transitions when they're in, the upper echelons of their ex, their field.

03:28 – Gresham Harkless 

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I appreciate you so much for sharing that. I can't imagine how much of a challenge that was.

But, I love that kind of, for lack of a better term, maybe perspective or just awareness that we sometimes want to put, I guess, aspects of our life in silos and say this or that, and not realizing, and as you said, the terrain and the terrain that often comes along that journey.

And those less-than-ideal experiences sometimes shape us and build us into who we are and help us to live our purpose our mission and what we're ultimately called to do.

04:03 – Coach Angela Kerri

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think too, for a lot of times, people, as you mentioned, live their life in silos and don't see the bigger picture. And a lot of times when we hit that proverbial wall that I call it when I talk to my clients about, it's not necessarily just the wall. You've got to kind of step back and look around and see what else is before you besides the wall.

Usually, it's the alternate route some other door that you need to take and sometimes I always truly believe that life happens in such a way that if you don't learn that lesson, whatever that universal lesson is, it will come back around until you come to terms with it and align yourself with that broader purpose.

04:52 – Gresham Harkless 

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more, a little bit more on how you're working with your clients.

I know you touched on it a little bit, but could you take me through how you're serving your clients, and how you're working with them?

05:02 – Coach Angela Kerri 

Absolutely. So, again, my primary service is to high-performing professional women. And I really make that distinction because not everybody categorizes themselves as high-performing. And the reason I mentioned that is a lot of the women that I tend to work with have a lot of Alpha-like tendencies.

They're competitive for whatever reason, whether that's healthy or not. And so my program, what I find is it targets the misalignment that's often happening in that woman's life. And what I mean by that is a lot of times, that woman is the source of creative, input from her organization, her family, her friends, her partner, her spouse, and her children.

But oftentimes she does it at the neglect of her own well-being. So while she is consistently pouring out, her internal peace, her authentic self is either being suppressed or ignored. And over time and space, what ends up happening is she will continue to acquire the accolades, the certifications, the awards, and all that comes with it.

But inside, she's literally, figuratively dying. She doesn't even recognize who she is anymore because she has filled herself up with the roles that she should play, but she needs to understand that they are that, and that's just roles.

And it's not, it's an expression of who she is, but it's not what defines her. And so my program targets that piece and seeks to realign her so that she's operating from a place of joy, from a place of peace, and not feeling just anxious, and feeling like she has to consistently perform.

And what ends up happening through my coaching program sometimes is that when we go through that program, we come to this block, and we realize that, oh, maybe it's dealing with something that happened in my childhood that I felt like I wasn't measuring up enough or I wasn't performing hard enough.

And so at that point, if we decide that it's something that she can't move forward on, then I pivot and say, okay. Then I need to refer you to a licensed therapist, and we need to do some work there before you can continue. There's a fine line between a life coach and a licensed therapist, and I know the difference because I really, hold dear expertise, and I know my lane, and I drive in it.

So, my course is primarily online because it's for professional women who are busy. So she can access it. It's self-paced. She can access it online and on her iPhone, so it's also an app. So she can listen to things. She can watch videos.

There are also some worksheets that she can do, but then also it's accented or complemented by meeting with me one-on-one, whether it's virtually given the environment we're in or in person, which I do have my own office in Fairfax.

From three months to a year, they're there in the program because we're doing some deep inner work. I take pride in the fact that it's not your typical coaching. So we are in that for about a year, and then see where things are.

But, usually, a woman is leaving feeling much more whole and authentic in how she presents herself.

08:33 – Gresham Harkless 

Nice. I appreciate you breaking that down. I want to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce.

This could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both, but what do you feel sets you apart and makes you unique?

08:43 – Coach Angela Kerri 

So I think, one of the keywords that I brand myself with is authenticity. I find that a lot of times, in this world of entrepreneurship and branding, when you are the brand and it's not a product, it really lends itself to you to be authentic in who you are.

And for me, going with what I went through with my husband and ultimately my daughters, I had to go through that in her work process myself. And I always tell people, I am my first client. So that program applied to me.

I had to start from scratch. I had to kind of go deep within and figure out where what was important to me and what was I going to prioritize. Was I going to fall into depression and grief, or was I going to turn this thing around and grow from that experience?

And so I chose obviously the latter. And so I think that gives me a differentiating factor as well as my career. My background in particular being a woman, a woman of color, operating in spaces that are primarily dominated by male men, and white men, and then also having to navigate as a substantive expert, and being that go-to person and being in the room, having to navigate that.

I think that gives me a little bit of experience on the stressors of, what happens to a lot of women who are trying to go up the corporate ladder or start their own business. I think I can speak to a lot of that.

My program deals with root issues so that you can have sustainable change because you're gonna keep going around in circles.

It's kind of that high or that fix that you get when you talk to a good friend and you hear a good sermon or you had a good session therapy session and you leave, and then you fall right back into the same patterns. And so my program is really aimed at kind of breaking those cyclical patterns.

10:50 – Gresham Harkless 

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack.

So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:02 – Coach Angela Kerri 

And the first is, no surprise here as a holistic life coach's meditation. I find that meditation is something that really provides me the ability to hone into a lot of, skills that I think are innate in women, and that is intuition.

I approach that in meditation, and I find it to be a win-win situation for me. It quiets me. It levels me. It allows me to remind myself of the broader, higher goals that I have in life. It's my why. It reminds me of my why. Meditation can be interchangeable with prayer, and journaling.

I cannot completely ignore the spiritual side of things. I find that to be, important and foundational. And then the second thing that I would mention too is boundaries. And I feel that a lot of times, we confuse boundaries with walls.

Walls are erected when you're coming from a place of a hardened heart, hurt, pain, trauma.

And sometimes walls prevent you from seeing what could be blessings or things that are opportunities that you need to take.

But because you're coming from a place of not being whole, you're not ready, and you miss those opportunities. Boundaries, on the other hand, are coming from a place where you are healed, and you understand your mission, your vision.

To me, boundaries emphasize physical location. That means you know where you are enough to be able to have your know your territory and be able to draw the lines effectively, and it brings constraint because you have a vision. You have a goal in mind. And so that is something that I find to be very powerful, but super distinct.

12:55 – Gresham Harkless 

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you breaking that down. So, I was asking now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice.

I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

13:10 – Coach Angela Kerri 

I would say for anyone, especially CEOs, to be flexible in your execution, but firm in your convictions.

A lot of times, especially in the world we're living in now when things are just not sure. And so I think the big challenge is to kind of have that flexibility in how you execute your vision, whatever that is, to kind of ride the wave, adapt as you can.

Be firm in your conviction so you never have to lose sight of what your core values and in.

Like, those are not necessarily in exchange for one of the other. You know what I mean? And when I first started out, that was something that I struggled with.

I thought like, if I move from my plan, I'm not being true to what I believe, and that's not necessarily true. I just had to find a different way to execute it.

14:06 – Gresham Harkless 

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

We're hoping to have different quote, unquote, CEOs on this. So Coach Angela, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:18 – Coach Angela Kerri 

So for me, I gotta go back to the authenticity. So, I think a CEO is a leader who is aligned with their true authentic self, and they can promote greatness in others.

So I think that when you're authentically you, you can then mentor those who come across your path and are even perceived as greater than you. I find that CEOs forget that there's this kind of pass-the-baton responsibility that we also have.

So what's the legacy that you wanna leave? And who's taking up that legacy when you're gone and you're no longer here on this earth? Yes. Have your store. Yes. Have your product, and your service, but be able to effectively pass it on or even start getting into intellectual property.

That's something that we do not really need to start those conversations. Those are like, next-level wealth building that makes it bigger than just you and I.

15:15 – Gresham Harkless 

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Coach Angela, truly appreciate that definition. I, of course, appreciate your time even more.

What I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best people can get a hold of you, find out about all their awesome things you're working on.

15:32 – Coach Angela Kerri 

So they can definitely contact me at angelakerri.com, where they can see all of my services.

We also have a separate retreat website, which is innherwork.com. So, I look forward to meeting you and talking with you again.

15:50 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. Definitely appreciate it. And to make sure InnHERwork is i-n-n-h-e-r work, just to let people know.

But we will definitely have the link and information to show notes as well too to make it even easier.

Of course, I appreciate you for helping us as well today too.

16:04 – Coach Angela Kerri 

Thank you so much, Gresh. I appreciate it.

16:06 – Outro 

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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