IAM1404- Personal Development Coach Helps Young Professionals in Corporate America

Sydney is a badass young female entrepreneur who focuses her work on personal development coaching. After leaving her successful career as a Buyer in Corporate America due to severe burnout, anxiety, and lack of fulfillment, she began her own Coaching Business full-time. She now focuses on helping young professionals find clarity and purpose in their lives, navigate overwhelm, connect to their authentic selves, and take the next step towards success in their lives and careers. She has a unique perspective on coaching work that makes yogic philosophy, spirituality, and personal development accessible and applicable to high-achieving young professionals in Corporate America.

• CEO Story: Sydney had a successful career in the corporate world which led her to burnout and anxiety that made her leave her job. After she found clarity and purpose in her life’s perspective, it’s about time to help others in need through her coaching programs which are made unique.
• Business Service: One-on-one coaching program.
• Secret Sauce: Unique management coaching. Exposure to the corporate world and the creative world.
• CEO Hack: The one that holds them back from accomplishing their goals is themselves. Consistency with the morning routine.
• CEO Nugget: You are never going to be perfect, and it's okay.
• CEO Defined: More committed to your purpose than to your comfort zone.

Website: https://www.sydneyaxelrod.com/
Instagram: http://instagram.com/wildflower.movement
Free Training – “The 4 Keys To Get Unstuck – Even if you are burnt out, anxiety-ridden and over it”: https://bit.ly/2spZSyP
Podcast: Everyday Woo Woo
Podcast Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/everyday-woo-woo/id1410823707?mt=2
Podcast Instagram: http://instagram.com/everydaywoowoo

Episode Link: https://iamceo.co/2018/09/28/iam074-personal-development-coach-helps-young-professionals-in-corporate-america

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Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEO's without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share precisely the information you're searching for. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:27 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Sydney Xrod of sydneyexerod.com. and Sydney is a badass young female entrepreneur who focuses her work on personal development coaching. After leaving her successful career as a buyer in corporate America due to severe burnout, anxiety, and lack of fulfillment, she began her own coaching business full-time.

She now focuses on helping young professionals find clarity and purpose in their lives, navigate, overwhelm, connect to their authentic selves, and take the next step towards success in their lives and careers. She has a unique perspective on coaching work that makes yogic philosophy, spirituality, and personal development accessible and applicable to high-achieving young professionals in corporate America. Sydney, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:18 – Sydney Axelrod

I'm ready. Let's do it.

01:21 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome, awesome. Well, I wanted to kind of ask you a little bit more about your CEO story and what kind of led you to start your business.

01:28 – Sydney Axelrod

Sure. I grew up in Denver, Colorado. I went to college at Emory University. Don't know if many people have heard about it. It's in Georgia. Yeah, it's in Atlanta. Yeah. It's a small school with a really great business school. And I studied marketing and finance there. I did a visual arts minor. So I've always kind of been one to be interested in both the creative and the analytical. And then from there, I moved out to Minneapolis. I got a job at Target Corporation. So I've always been kind of a type a perfectionist. Maybe some people who are listening can relate to my story, but kind of did all the things, you know.

I got a 3.9 GPA at Emory. I worked my butt off to get basically straight A's, went to Target, worked my butt off there, and within three years at Target, I was running a $1.3 billion business at Target. So, loved it, had a great experience, kind of worked my, worked my way up to do exactly what I wanted to do there. After about four years at Target, I had my first kind of moment where I strayed from the plan of, you know, the perfectionist plan of good grades, and good job. What's next? What's next? Promotion, etcetera. And I made a decision to actually take some time off and do some traveling and not have a plan, so to speak.

So I love Target. I didn't want to stay in Minnesota, so I decided to leave. I went back home to Denver. I attempted to take three months off and ended up taking a year off. And what I did was, you know, I did some. I backpacked for a while by myself, and I did yoga teacher training programs and I did life coaching programs, and I painted and I just kind of explored my passions and what I loved. And then after a year, I decided to move out to San Francisco, which is where I am now. And it was kind of my first call to action, so to speak, of starting to live more in alignment with my purpose, where I was like, okay, I think I want to get out of retail.

I want to follow my passions of, you know, I got really into yoga and yoga philosophy and wellness and that kind of thing. But of course, like every story, I declined the first call. And I took a job out of fear because San Francisco is such an expensive place to live. So I took another job in corporate retail as a buyer and went down that road again because that's what I knew, that's what I was good at. But within a year, it was very clear that it was not the right place for me. I was living so out of alignment with what was true for me, and that kind of manifested in a lot of anxiety. I started having panic attacks. You kind of read this in my bio. I just got so burnt out.

I was working so much and working so hard and just not enjoying what I was doing and where I was working. The environment was quite toxic, and it was just a tough experience for me. And I kind of got to this place where I was so burnt out that it was hard for me to even figure out another job. Also, because I was working crazy hours, I just didn't have the time or energy to find the right thing for me. So what I did was, again, I quit without a plan. I had booked a two-week leadership intensive workshop in Costa Rica with my favorite coach and teacher, who I had worked with before, and did this, like, immersive, deep self-work and self-exploration, and came back with a nine-month plan of something that I curated in this.

In that place where I was dreaming really big. I was really excited. And what that plan was, was to become a life coach. I had, just, through doing what I loved, already completed all of the prerequisites to this coaching program. But I came back and the fear settled back in, and I was like, do I get a job? What do I do now? And I. What happened was I actually got really sick for kind of a while. So I think all the stress, all the pressure took its toll on my body, and I was a bit out of commission for a while, just trying to heal. And that was kind of a wake-up call for me because I was like, wow, I really did some damage to myself by being in such a stressful environment for so long.

And that was kind of where I was able to flip in my mind my narrative from, okay, why won't this nine-month plan work that I had created in Costa Rica to What if it does work and how do I make it work? And I just changed my thinking. I ended up doing basically six months of what I considered my form of grad schooling. So just doing entrepreneurship courses and life coaching. You know, I got my certification as a life coach, and I did health coach courses and worked with doctors and I worked with coaches and I healed myself and I did all this work.

And then after that, I was just like, this is what I'm doing. It was just more of like a knowing. I was like, I want to keep doing this work, and I want to share what I've learned with people, and I want to make this into a business. And I just felt like I knew that that was where I needed to take my career. So now I've jumped into the world of starting my own business working for myself and making my passion a full-time job.

06:52 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I'm sorry too, obviously, to hear all of that happens, but sometimes I tell myself, sometimes it gets darkest before dawn and, you know, even though you had that stress and the burnout and all those things were kind of taking its toll, seems like it led you to the path that you sounds like you wanted to go in the first place or should have maybe been going in the first place and being in alignment with who you are and what it is that you're doing for clients as well, too.

07:14 – Sydney Axelrod

Oh, totally. Yeah, totally. I'm grateful for all of that. And some of the moments I couldn't find that, but now I'm like, oh, of course, you know, if you're living so out of alignment, something is going to be like, hey, you know, knocking on your door, like, change your path. And the more you don't listen, the stronger it gets until literally, I was just kind of taken out of commission until I had to rethink my plan. So I totally think that stuff was just part of the process of finding out what I really wanted to do and having the courage to step out of my comfort zone and just do it.

07:46 – Gresham Harkless

That makes perfect sense. And now, so for the people that you work with, like the clients that you have, could you talk a little bit more about, like, how you help them and the things that you do for them?

07:54 – Sydney Axelrod

Yes, sure. So what I love to do is one-on-one coaching. And I think just to give you a little more info on what life coaching is, maybe, you know, maybe you don't. But the way I like to describe it is when you think about general therapy because more people are familiar with therapy. Right. So therapy is a lot about where are you now and how you got here. So kind of working through the things that made you, you, uncovering your story, that kind of thing. Coaching is more around where are you now, where you want to go, and how we get you there.

What I do in coaching is help individuals identify how they may be holding themselves back from achieving their goals, realizing their full potential, and living in alignment with their purpose. Because I have the belief that, you know, if you have an unhealed part of your story, it's going to be showing up for you right now. And so coaching is a little more like around the tactical. There's a lot of self-exploration and discovery and then putting it into action. So I work with clients over the phone, 1-hour sessions typically.

And then after each session, there's always what I call soul work or homework for them to do, which is taking a discovery from the session that we had and actually applying it to your life. And that's such a big part of transformation and a big part of coaching is actually making the change. So it doesn't just live in a 1-hour discussion, it actually becomes a part of your life. So that's really what I do. I work with people one-on-one over time to work through any resistance that comes up.

I do a lot of work around uncovering and letting go of limiting beliefs, you know, identifying what people's values are and how to live more in alignment with them, or, you know, what people say, like, what their purpose in life is. Do a lot of work around supporting and managing anxiety and depression. And I have experience with that and mindfulness and self-care and also, like, processing and working through emotions. So it's really broad, but it's really like anything that is holding you back, let's bring that to the surface. And work through it so that you can really create the life that you want to lead.

10:11 – Gresham Harkless

Now, I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce, which might be something that you feel distinguishes you or makes you and your organization unique.

10:18 – Sydney Axelrod

My secret sauce, I think, is that I have a unique vantage point on coaching because I have. I think of myself as having lived in two different worlds my whole life. So half of my life has been spent in, you know, the corporate world and going to a good school, getting good grades, and being a type kind of perfectionist in that arena. And then the other half has been in the creative, philosophical coaching and yoga world. You know, I also have almost 500 hours of yoga teacher training under my belt.

So it's like, I love doing that stuff. And whenever I've been in, the coaching world or the yoga world and kind of hanging around those, you know, more free-spirited, creative beings, I've always been the corporate one. And in the corporate world, I've always been, you know, the hippie one who people come to for mindfulness tips and diet tips and all of that kind of, you know, holistic wellness kind of stuff. So I think that's kind of, my uniqueness.

11:19 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And that makes perfect sense, especially because, like you mentioned, you know, you've actually experienced it. You've actually done it. You've kind of experienced both sides of the coin, so to speak. So you already know when you are speaking with somebody, you can kind of relate to them to that degree to kind of make sure that they're going to the path and they're saying in alignment with what it is that they're quote-unquote supposed to do. And now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And a CEO hack could be an app or a book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

11:50 – Sydney Axelrod

Yeah, this is going to sound cliche and like a self-promotion, and it's not, but for me, it's just working on my own self-development. And I just believe with my whole heart that, you know, the biggest obstacle that holds anyone back from realizing their potential or accomplishing the goals that they have is themselves and their relationship with themselves. And the other thing I was thinking, like, the way that I incorporate my own self-development with consistency is I've become really obsessed with my morning routine.

12:22 – Gresham Harkless

And now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this might be a word of wisdom or piece of advice you might.

12:28 – Sydney Axelrod

Have, I would say nobody knows what the hell they're doing. And it's okay. It's all part of, you know, the experience of being human, and you're not. It's almost like you're never gonna know. You're never gonna be completely healed. You're never gonna be full, you know, complete and whole, and, you know, in the way that you have in your vision, and yet you already are complete and whole and perfect as you are. And there's just always more.

12:55 – Gresham Harkless

Now, I wanna ask you, which is what my favorite question is, What is kind of the definition of being a CEO? So what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:02 – Sydney Axelrod

Yes. A CEO to me means being more committed to your purpose than to your comfort zone. I think, really, you know, I've been thinking about this, and I think that the hardest part of following your calling of, like, taking the leap to become a CEO, so to speak, is. Is not following your calling. It's not starting the business. I actually think that the hardest part is stepping away from your comfort zone or from the place that you know is safe, that you know will work out for you.

Or that you think you know, that you have more control around. So kind of stepping away from all of these conditioned ideals around success. And so, as in my experience as a, you know, quote-unquote CEO, I feel like I have to step out of my comfort zone and just commit to my purpose. I have to do that every single day that I'm in this role. So it's not just a one-time leap. It's every single day that you're. That you're choosing your business and your purpose over your fear and your comfort zone.

14:05 – Gresham Harkless

I love that. I love that. Sydney, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I want to do is pass you to the mic to see if there is anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know and also how best people can get a hold of you.

14:16 – Sydney Axelrod

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just want to thank you. I love what you're doing. I love that you have this focus on healthful CEO's, I think this content is so valuable, and I can't wait to listen to what everyone else has to say. So thank you for following your purpose and doing your work. And, yeah. So to connect with me or anything else, my website is sydneyexelrod.com, and that's a x e l r o d in Sydney. Like Sydney, Australia. And then I'm also on Instagram at Wildflower Movement if you want to see more inspirational posts tips and tools for mindfulness and self-care.

And then I also have a podcast called Everyday Woowoo that I do with a friend who is kind of a boss lady at Google. So kind of two interesting perspectives. So that's everyday-woo-woo on Instagram. And then just to share with you what I'm doing now, I think if anyone is interested in exploring coaching, whether it's new or not to you, I like to offer the first three coaching sessions with me as pay what you can afford. And then, you know, I sell a wildflower deck of affirmations online. So just kind of positive messages to come back to every day to retrain your brain to think in a more productive way rather than focusing on fear and worry.

And then the last thing I wanted to offer is I'm super excited about this and it's on creating your perfect morning routine program called Wake up. It's a seven-day coach and Kickstarter program. And then I'll happy to offer, you know, for people who listen to this podcast, 10% off of that if you want to try it. So that's kind of what I have going on.

16:03 – Gresham Harkless

And we'll have those links in the show notes just so that anybody can follow up. But Sydney, I appreciate you for being a badass and doing all these awesome things, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:13 – Sydney Axelrod

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you too. And thank you for having me.

16:17 – 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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