Lauren Strangio is a mother to two boys and works a full-time corporate job. She lives in Ukiah, CA. One year ago she discovered Health Coach Institute and signed up for the “Become A Health Coach” (BHC) 6-month health coach certification training, while pregnant with her second child. After giving birth and completing BHC, she invested in the HMBA Grad Intensive program. Lauren now has nine paying clients and says she’s already made back her investment in just two months.

Lauren works with busy moms to help them double their energy and make themselves a priority again after having kids “without having to yo-yo diet and count calories”. As a mother herself, she tells us that she chose this niche because she knows firsthand how hard it is to make yourself a priority again after giving all you’ve got to your children.

We are proud to feature Lauren today in our new Spotlight category as living proof that anything is possible as long as you make the commitment to yourself first and follow a plan of action.
We asked Lauren how she did it? Here’s her inspirational story.

What made you choose to become a Health Coach?
In my early twenties I had a binge eating disorder and bulimia, and before that, from age 12 to 20, a drug habit. Once I kicked the drug habit I started hanging out with my mom, who is into fitness, and that was when I fell into food addiction, which led to bulimia. I hadn’t dealt with why I had addictive behaviors in the first place, so the addiction just found a different channel to go through, which was food.

Two years later, when I hit a breaking point again, I talked to a counselor and really got into the reasons why I had addictions, and I realized that weight loss was not just about  counting calories and working out, that there was a mental aspect to weight loss. But it wasn’t until a year ago that I found Health Coach Institute (HCI) that I even knew Health Coaching existed.

People were always asking me what they should do with their health and I felt like I was giving them golden information but they weren’t doing anything with it. I like to geek out on health info but other people don’t care about the information, they just want the change. But until I discovered HCI and went through BHC, I didn’t know how to facilitate that habit change. HCI encompassed everything that I knew would be helpful to people. When I first heard Carey talk about it, I thought “that’s exactly how I would put it!” So that’s what drew me to Health Coaching.

What was your biggest takeaway from Become A Health Coach (BHC)?
When I signed up for BHC I was pregnant with my second son, and I had my son while going through Pillar 2. It was divine timing because I  had to go through the 90-day intensive and was dealing with baby-weight and postpartum depression so it helped me discover things I didn’t know about myself—like what was missing beyond the food and calorie counting.

I learned how powerful certain exercises are to break you out of your own beliefs. That brought to light what was missing and needed my attention. Once I saw it in black and white, I realized I hadn’t been tapping into my creativity and it was being suppressed and came out in another area— so that helped me get through the postpartum depression.

After I graduated, I stopped pushing my professional dream away anymore and decided to go full force, and I did exactly as we were taught and listened again and again to the video trainings to keep my motivation going because every time I listened, I heard something new and it hit home for me on that day and brought power to my sessions.

How does life look now that you’re an HMBA Grad Spotlight student?
I now have nine paying clients and got nine more people just yesterday from a talk I gave to sign up for a closing-the-deal conversation. I don’t know how many will become paying clients but I have a 75% rate of closing. Other Health Coaches in my area, who went to different schools, don’t really have clients. HMBA is a super well planned out training and I knew that it was giving me a huge leg up.

Last month, from Health Coaching alone, (I’m still working my corporate job too) I brought in $8k and in the month before that I brought in $6k so I really went full force and I’m just starting out! The difference (between HCI and other schools) is in the skills we are taught. This is only one year later (after investing in HMBA Grad) and I’m already making this kind of money. So, professionally, I couldn’t ask for more.

How are you finding HMBA Grad to be different than BHC?
What stands out for me in HMBA Grad is taking everything that we learned in BHC and going deeper with it. It’s similar material we hit on in BHC but now it’s about implementing it. Because knowing it and taking action on it are two different things. When you take action, that’s when beauty happens. Yes I was scared but I just did it. I just kept on going and it has gotten easier every time. Like doing cold calls to yoga studios, for example. Carey taught me to always come from a place of “How can I serve you first” and when you do that, people have open arms and want you to do talks or to become a referral partner. I went from BHC to implementing it all in HMBA Grad and now I just can’t wait to dig into the Transformational Coaching Method.

What’s the greatest thing about being an HMBA Grad student?
The best thing is the constant motivation from knowing I have a community (of coaches) around me. As a coach, It’s good to have other coaches in your community because that’s what keeps you accountable to your actions. I love sharing how I’m doing with my community because it helps me to keep upleveling myself.

Another thing that’s great about the HMBA Grad community is because I still have my corporate job, I’ve been reaching out to other students who have left their corporate jobs to become full-time Health Coaches to ask them how they did it and if it really is awesome. Instead of focusing on when this change is going to happen for me, I just focus on how it’s going to happen. So part of that how is that right now, in HMBA Grad, I’m in phase one so my focus is on getting paying clients and mastering the closing-the-deal conversation. Once I get my momentum going, it’s only up from there. Personally, I really need that help from my community of coaches to focus on the overview of my vision. It helps to have someone else looking at the overview of my professional life with me.

Of all the health coaching schools out there, why did you choose HCI? 
I chose HCI most definitely because of the curriculum and the fact that it included business and marketing skills, done-for-you checklists, done-for-your programs, and every kind of tool I would need for success. What I love and appreciate the most about Stacey and Carey is their realness, their humor, and the feeling that it doesn’t need to be formal or stuffy. I loved that the curriculum was easy to learn and that I could do it in my own time, which I absolutely needed. I listened to the videos on the treadmill or while pushing the kids in the stroller and did skills labs with my partner in my own time and recorded it so I could listen to it again and again. That piece was huge. Carey always made me feel like it was okay for the beginning to feel clunky and hard and then she’d say to keep going and get over it. She pre-framed that everything new is going to feel different in the beginning. Now that I’ve given the done-for-you talks four times, it’s way more comfortable.

What would you tell someone considering HMBA?
I couldn’t be happier. I never went to college because I got hired at my corporate job at nineteen and I’ve always worried that if I lost it, I’d have nothing to fall back on. And now I’m making more money than at my corporate job and I know I will always have this skill and I can be my own boss and even take my kids to school!  So for me, it gave me freedom, the ability to be creative in my own work and it’s given me the best things in life, which are time with my family…and freedom…and abundance.

What were your greatest fears that you had to overcome on your journey?
My biggest fear was that I thought my husband wouldn’t be okay with me leaving the corporate job. But once I let go of that fear, he’s been very supportive. I had to break the fear of just going after my dream. And I had to know I was good enough without a college education. I had to trust in the process and that it would take me down whatever avenue it needed to. We get stuck in a place where we think we have to be a certain way and go to a certain job and save for retirement and pray for the weekend and go on vacation once every five years. And now I know that the world doesn’t need to be that way. And I’ve been shown that this past year.

Any last words of advice to people reading your story?
HMBA Grad is 100 % worth it. You can make the money you invested in it back in two months. I did. Once you step past that fear of making the investment, you are doing the best thing you can do, which is to invest in yourself. The biggest thing you can do is to push through the fears because so many people need our help, and if  you already know inside that you have that to give, then let it unleash and give it.

Lauren’s final words: “Holistic MBA is a beautiful way of delivering an absolutely genius program.”

Eager to learn more about Health Coaching?

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Coaching is a great career that you can help others, while also learning how to help your own personal growth. Health Coach Institute is a top health and wellness coaching certification program. Join our Become a Health Coach program and begin coaching in 6 months! If you are already a coach and want to advance your skills, check out HCI’s Coach Mastery program. Feel free to get in touch with with one of our clarity coaches directly, by calling 1-800-303-2399.

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