IAM2257 – Ayurvedic Practitioner Helps Clients Achieve a Transformative Balanced Life

In this episode, Ileana Gonzalez is an experienced Ayurvedic practitioner and wellness advocate.

Ileana emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach to health, which encompasses physical, mental, emotional, relational, and financial well-being.

Ileana discusses how she adapted her business to online platforms during the pandemic, offering personalized Ayurvedic consultations, mindfulness practices, and financial strategies to help clients achieve a balanced life.

She highlights the interconnectedness of lifestyle changes and their cumulative benefits, stressing the need for intentionality in promoting health daily.

Moreover, Ileana emphasizes that business success is not solely measured by financial gain but by the positive impact on others.

Website: Apurva Wellness

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Transcription:

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Ileana Gonzalez Teaser 00:00

Intentionally focusing on promoting health every day. And if you think about it, like what is health? Health is all of those things that we mentioned. It's physical, it's mental, it's emotional, it's relationships, it's my finances.

My finances is a huge part of it because you can't often have one without the other. Unfortunately, we live in a world where health costs money.

Intro 00:28

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:55

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast of Ileana Gonzalez. Ileana, excited to have you on the show.

Ileana Gonzalez 01:01

Thank you so much. It's so good to be here after so long.

Gresham Harkless 01:05

I know, I know. Great things happen when, good times happen, I guess when you're busy and I'm so, I'm excited to have you back on.

Ileana Gonzalez 01:12

Absolutely. Good to be here.

Gresham Harkless 01:14

Absolutely. So of course, to kick everything off, I wanted to read a little bit more about Ileana so you can hear about some of the awesome things she's been working on.

And as an experienced Ayurvedic practitioner, yoga teacher, lifestyle mentor, and wellness advocate, Ileana believes in the long-term rewards of a healthy lifestyle and is very much committed to supporting her clients' self-discovery journey.

Her programs include personalized ayurvedic consultations, mindfulness practices, and financial strategies, all aimed at fostering a balanced and fulfilling life.

Ileana's mission is to help individuals achieve vibrant living and financial freedom. And Ileana was a guest on episode number 45 of our CEO chat podcast.

And I love that she calls herself the menopause babe, which I thought was pretty awesome. I'm sure we're going to delve in a little bit deeper on what that looks like.

But I remember from the previous interview we had, she had a really great story of how she got started. And it just reminded me of the quote, it's always darkest before dawn.

And sometimes those dark moments actually open up tremendous opportunities. So Ileana, excited to have you back on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Ileana Gonzalez 02:22

Absolutely, yes, I'm excited.

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Gresham Harkless 02:25

Awesome. Well, to kick everything off, let's rewind the clock a little bit. I know I touched on it a little bit. Here a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

Ileana Gonzalez 02:33

Yeah, and that's so great that you remember the story. And I was talking to somebody recently about the story and it was in a different context, but I realized that that story is a good reminder to myself that I can manifest the things that I really want.

If I really go deep into my heart, everything is going to fall into place. And so it's always good to go back to those stories, right?

But really, what happened was that I was working in a corporate setting. I was in IT consulting, financial sector. And at the beginning of 2009, in January of 2009, I got laid off of that job.

And, of course, would you remember what happened at the end of 2008 and everything that kind of led up to my getting laid off? It was pretty much the writing was on the wall.

But the incredible thing about that moment was that I had already been planting the seeds in my heart to step away from that corporate world and the so-called rat race.

And I knew that I wanted to take some time to just be with myself and really discover what I wanted to do, not based on this sort of like corporate template that people give you of what your career is supposed to look like.

I didn't know anything else other than the fact that I wanted to travel and I knew that I wanted to be in India because India had always really just drawn me culturally and the philosophy, everything about it had always really drawn me.

So I really saw this as an opportunity. So instead of going into panic mode, like, Oh my gosh, I'm getting laid off. I don't I don't have another another plan. I said, No, this is it.

Like, this is actually what I've been wanting to do. But the universe just really accelerated the plan.

And so I ended up I mean really what I did was I bought a one-way ticket because I didn't I knew I wanted to go but I didn't know and I was wanted to come back and I ended up traveling a little bit to other places, but I spent about 4 or 5 months in India that first time.

That's when I say that Ayurveda really discovered me as opposed to the other way around. I think all along that's what was really calling me to go to India is to discover what Ayurveda is.

And little did I know that that's really, it would change my life in a really, really big way.

But really, the other part of that story is that I was very much open at that time to really receive whatever it was that I needed to receive. So it has a happy ending, obviously.

Gresham Harkless 05:49

Yeah, absolutely. We appreciate and love, opportunities, stories like that, that end up in those opportunities and see, like, we also had a major ship.

So I guess I wanted to drill down a little bit more, hear a little bit more on how you're working with and serving clients. Can you take us through a little bit more on what that looks like?

Ileana Gonzalez 06:05

Obviously the way that my business looked before the pandemic, that wasn't really going to be very feasible.

So it was a great opportunity to shift and to take advantage of everything that was opening up in terms of Zoom and online.

So again, I really saw it as an opportunity to explore what my practice and what my business was going to look like moving forward.

And it took me, I had a couple of false starts, I would say like 2021. I was, I think I wasn't fully like committed to doing everything online. I tried doing a couple of things, but they didn't really take off the way that I had hoped.

So I started exploring some other things and in my own personal journey. And I realized that that's like a that's also an area where I could show up for my clients and help them through that. But in order to do that, I had to do the work myself. Right.

Gresham Harkless 07:18

Yeah. That ends up being powerful when you're able to go through that transformation and the realization of that.

And I imagine is that a lot of the conversations that you're having with the clients, the people that you work with.

And I would love to hear a little bit more for those people that aren't familiar with Ayurveda, what exactly that is.

And is that like kind of your secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of sets you apart is your ability to see things holistically, not as silos like financial goes here, health goes here, relations go here,

all things that seem to be intertwined under that.

Ileana Gonzalez 07:50

That's 100% what it is, yes. I want to give people a comprehensive review of systems. We wanna review, everybody has health goals, everybody.

Yes, I want to be healthy, okay. But that doesn't happen magically or overnight. For some people it might be easier, for some people it might be more difficult.

But the point is that you have to be really intentional every day you have to you really do have to live with the intention of promoting health.

Everything that you do is either promoting health or it's promoting sickness. It's one of the one or the other.

There is really not an in-between spot, right? So intentionally focusing on promoting health every day.

And if you think about it, like what is health? Health is all of those things that we mentioned. It's physical, it's mental, it's emotional, it's relationships, it's my finances.

My finances is a huge part of it because you can't often have one without the other.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where health costs money. But my job is to find the things that will help you promote long-term health and well-being in a way that's feasible to you.

So even if you don't have a lot of money, walking outside in nature is free. The thing about lifestyle is that the rewards multiply because they have like this sort of domino effect, right?

If you change one thing, it's going to affect everything else that comes after it. So lifestyle changes, it's very gratifying because you see the results in many different areas. Not just like, like you said, it's not siloed, it's holistic.

Gresham Harkless 09:53

Yeah, and that is it being so powerful and that makes so much sense. So you feel like the creating space, time, and energy, exercise, whatever that might be to join those things together is the thing that can make us be more effective and efficient.

Ileana Gonzalez 10:06

You can't expect your body and your mind to be efficient. You can't expect the output to be as efficient if the input is not consistent.

And so we're the same way. We can't expect to put any old thing in our body and not worry about our rest, right?

And expect the output to be efficient or expect the output to be really optimal. And that is one thing that, yeah, as CEOs and as entrepreneurs, we have to make time for that and we have to focus on that if we want to see results in other areas of our life, for sure.

Gresham Harkless 11:01

Yeah. So what would you consider to be a little bit more, you might've already touched on this, a CEO nugget?

So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice, but I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client or if you happen to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Ileana Gonzalez 11:14

Yes. Cash flow is a thing. Cash flow is an issue. You may have some really good months and you may have some not so good months, but in the grand scheme of things, it's all going to work out.

There are so many tools out there to help you. There are so many resources out there.

For the most part, the people in your life want you to succeed, right? Your significant other, your spouse, they want you to succeed. They're going to help you in any way that they can.

For the most part, your local resources, county, state, federal, there's tons of resources. B

ut you can't access them unless you know what's going on with your business. It's okay for it to not be raging success all of the time.

That's okay. It's not a reflection on you. It's not a reflection on how good or bad of a business person you are. I mean this is the nature of the business.

Like I said, you sign up for this. Unconsciously you have signed up for this uncertainty, for this instability, and you gotta have the tools to be able to navigate it or you're not going to make it or you're going to wear yourself out.

And for the love of God, you went into this because you enjoy it and you wanna share this joy that it brings you with others.

And so don't put yourself in that situation where it's just not gonna be enjoyable for you anymore because what's the point?

Gresham Harkless 12:59

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

And our goal is to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Ileana, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Ileana Gonzalez 13:11

It's usually a sense of big pride because I know that, I can say with 100% certainty, in my case at least, that hey, I started this in 2011, here I am almost 14, 15 years later with all of the ups and downs, but I made it.

Here I am. It's so important to, for me, at least on a personal level, to to always go back to that's my why.

My why is because I love it, I'm so passionate about it, and because I truly, truly believe that it can make such an impact on people the way that it did for me.

And so it gives me a sense of, what's the word? Like I feel really supported by that in and of itself.

Like I know that no matter what happens in some small way, I will have impacted someone out there.

Someone out there at some point, either I, they had a service for me or they had a conversation with me and something stuck with them.

And that just really gives me kind of like this sense of peace of mind, right? Peace of mind. Like it doesn't matter, like if I never become a bajillionaire, that's okay.

I still feel like I will have made an impact. If I do become a vigilante, that would be also awesome, right? I think that you can have both at the same time.

But yes, for me, it's my why. And the days that I get really discouraged, that's all I need to think about.

Gresham Harkless 15:14

Truly appreciate that, Ileana. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So 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 the awesome things that you're working on.

Ileana Gonzalez 15:27

We'll put the website on the show notes and you can always reach me there. You can email me at to ileana@apurvawellness.com. You can call me.

I know I think the show is going to publish a little bit after September 30th which is when the class starts but it will be an ongoing class.

So if you can't make this cohort, you'll make the next cohort. My goal is to offer it on a continuous basis because I know there's a lot of need for something like this out there.

Gresham Harkless 16:02

Yeah, absolutely. And just like Ileana said, we're gonna have the links and information the show knows as well too, so that everybody can reach out and connect and find out about all the awesome things that you're doing.

And thank you so much for coming back on the show and I hope you have a phenomenal day.

Ileana Gonzalez 16:15

Thank you so much. It was very good to be here.

Outro 16:18

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 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 Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a 5-star rating. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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