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Coach Interview Series: April Waldman

by Brandon

April Waldman

Intuitive Life Coach

www.aprilwaldman.com

Our main objective here at the National Coach Academy is to enable aspiring coaches to reach their full professional potential. One of the most effective ways to educate students about the world of coaching is by offering them a window into the world of real, practicing coaches and showing them all the different ways coaches make a difference in the lives of their clients.

We hope today’s interview adds another insightful glimpse into the dynamic world of coaching.

Today we are interviewing April Waldman. April is an Intuitive Life Coach and Energy Healer based in Oakland, CA.

NCA: Can you describe your coaching practice and the kinds of clients you typically work with?

April: I practice what I call Intuitive Life Coaching, which encompasses a combination of traditional coaching and Energy Healing and what I call Higher Guidance. I do a lot of work with clients to develop their awareness of their whole self to meet all different sorts of goals in their life.

NCA: Can you describe some of the most common struggles or challenges that clients come to you facing in their own lives?

April: I typically work with women anywhere from their mid 20s to their 50s. Most of them come to me either because they’re looking for a healthy relationship, a life partner, career challenges, or they’re undergoing a full life transformation. They might have had an experience where many things in their life are ending and they’re feeling lost or like everything is changing. They’re in a really big life change process. Those are the top three things.

NCA: What initially got you interested in becoming a coach and what kind of degree or certifications did you complete, if any?

April: I’ve always been interested in spiritual growth and transformation and life potential. It first started out with interest in exercise and how I can help people. I did social work and then I got interested in wellness. I was a massage therapist and then I got interested in energy healing. Life coaching kind of landed in my lap. I started working for a company based out of San Francisco that trained me to be a life coach. I worked for that company while having a private healing practice. Then over the years, I’ve combined them.

Through life coaching, I got interested in organizational development and consulting. I have a Master’s in Organizational Development. That, combined with all of the energy healing training, has really been the foundation for the personal work. A coach needs to have a really good foundation to be able to hold space for clients and be the instrument for the session.

NCA: In working with your clients, what would you say is the most rewarding part of that process?

April: I’ll use a client story. I have a gal I’m working with who is going through a divorce. She’s gone through a lot in the last year. I’ve been coaching her every week and have watched her go from feeling totally defeated, disconnected and lost, to her rediscovering her passion and rediscovering a new community of friends and realizing that in the marriage, she wasn’t able to fully be herself. In the span of a year, she’s gone from feeling like this is the worst thing that happened to her to seeing all of these different gifts in that.

She’s also experienced a reconnection with who she really is and parts of herself that she wanted to express since she was a child but she was never able to fully have enough courage to be herself in the world. She’s feeling really joyful now. She’s a magnet out there. She feels really big and she’s just glowing, and it’s from this really difficult thing that she went through.

The reason I do this work is I really believe in people’s highest potential. I really think people are ready.

NCA: What is the most challenging aspect of the work that you do?

April: When you work with people, there is the reality of transference, and it can go both ways. I can transfer what’s going on with me onto a client, and I have to stay really clear about that. That’s why I was talking about that self-awareness piece. I need to make sure I’m really, really clear and aware, so my sessions are really clean, especially when I’m giving feedback to a client that’s challenging.

It can also be challenging to assess what people are ready for and making sure the questions I’m asking and any feedback I’m giving is aligned with where that person is. Sometimes, I’ll just take the plunge and go for it and I get really good results doing that, but sometimes, it’s challenging. It doesn’t go with what you expected and that’s okay. I still think it was a good conversation. A seed was planted.

The reason I do this work is I really believe in people’s highest potential. I really think people are ready. Maybe in the earlier years of my coaching I wouldn’t have challenged people in the ways I do now, but that’s the higher guidance part of my work. I have a lot of training in working with intuition. I highly rely on that in my sessions. If I get the green light, I usually check in with my own inner guides and my own inner wisdom several times. If it’s the right time and if I get the yes, I trust that completely and go for it.

NCA: Can you think of a mentor or a coach in your own career who was the most vital to your success and in what ways did this mentor help you thrive in your career?

April: I’ve had a lot of really amazing mentors. The one that comes to mind in my career as a coach is my thesis advisor in my MSOD program at Pepperdine. It was so synchronistic. There’s a lot of people in that program that were more of an engineering mindset or more of a business mindset. And it’s not that I’m not of a business mindset, but one of my greatest gifts is my intuition.

My thesis advisor’s dream was the same as mine, which was to take awareness of the energy field and the whole biofield and bring that more into coaching, business, and leadership. It was wonderful for her to help me pull out my gifts when we would be in these coaching processes with a group of 30 people. I was really able to stand on my own unique gifts and clear out any old ideas I had around intuition and how that shows up in everyday life. That was a huge experience for me. She had that grounded in herself, so she was able to help train me in that and develop that for me.

That’s another great challenge in this field: your personal growth. Not that you have to be perfect, but really taking it seriously. That I’m not showing up in sessions as one person and then I show up in my personal life in another way. It’s about staying humble and doing your work and seeing your client as your teacher as well. Living what you say to other people that you apply that to yourself, too.

NCA: What is one piece of advice that you would give to somebody who is just starting out their coaching career?

April: The most practical thing is not to make it your livelihood yet. Do it for fun and make sure you have something else that doesn’t drain you that you can do to make money, so that you can fully be your authentic self.

People can sense that vibe if you’re authentic. It’s very attractive. But if you’re just doing it to get clients, people can sense that and you’re going to end up draining yourself and it’s probably not going to work.

My coaching is very, very unique and it took me years to have the courage to do the work I do and to speak what I feel is my authentic message. Not having that financial pressure helps you to feel free in doing that and the more that you do that, the better your business is going to go.

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