Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ann Gerrard. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Ann, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?
I was climbing the corporate ladder at a fast pace so that by the time I was 27, I was a Canadian senior executive in the health field, on the board of directors, having several hundred people across Canada working with me and I began to see that I was really good with personnel, clients and competitors in the business. It was during these times that I realized that I could see things from very different perspectives that others could not and I began to explore this. What I found was that when hiring people, I began to use my “gut” or intuition to guide me on ‘best fits’ for the company; which turned out to be very successful experiences.
So, I started to trust my inner guidance for direction in business more and more. It wasn’t until one day when I was told by my Global CEO that they wanted Canada to go in a direction that made practical, logical business sense; but for me I ‘FELT’ a huge resistance inside that somehow impelled me to say that I believed it to be the wrong direction for us to take. When you’re the youngest in the room, with hundreds of years of business experience within it, looking at you as though you are from another planet, you start to question yourself and the instinct you strongly feel. I had to make my plea and make a presentation as to why I felt so strongly about my position in which I wanted to prepare ourselves to move the business in an opposite direction. My global CEO said I had to put some skin in the game; that if I believed so passionately about our alternate direction then I had to put my job on the line. Shockingly to me, I agreed!
A few months went by and I was getting into gear with the Canadian staff, preparing for a major change that I believed was on the horizon, ‘blindly’ trusting my inner guidance. Nothing in my external environment was giving me ANY INDICATION that this was going to happen. About 12 months went by and we had been planning and continuing to prepare and my staff and other execs were looking at me strangely.
I began to ‘THINK’ that I had made the biggest mistake of my career and started to second guess myself in a bunch of things at work, became apprehensive, anxious and felt I was walking on glass each day I came into work; waiting for the guillotine to come down on my head! A few more months went by and then one morning the industry were briefed that there were major legislative changes coming down the pipe line. I was so incredibly relieved (and felt vindicated) as all our many months of hard prep work got rolled out on day 1 of the legislative changes. For the first time in our company’s history, we found ourselves in the very rare position of being ahead of the game and our competitors for over 6 months. We made a lot ‘hay’ while being the only kids on the block providing services to accommodate the new requirements.
This was a pivotal time for me when I learned to trust my intuition in business, with people and in life more and more with the choices and decisions I made; which helped me later as an executive coaching and today coaching young adults; because most often than not clients I coach tell you what they think they WANT, when I can intuitively sense what they NEED!
Ann, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
ABOUT ME: This path I navigated to become an intuitive Life Coach for Young adults was way overdue.
Severely mentally & emotionally abused as a child & youth till I was 19. I was the youngest of 4 and was made to feel ashamed, unworthy, not smart, pretty or good enough. I was demeaned and devalued, never told I was liked or loved by my parents, never hugged or held and for me back then, life was an unsafe environment: creating insecurity, fear and a lack of trust of the world. By the time I was 14, I thought if I ‘left here’ no-one would care and I wouldn’t be missed. I was in an extreme vulnerable place mentally and emotionally at this time. Then I had my first Ah HAA moment; during which I heard a voice in my head talk to me and say that I had yet to begin to accomplish what I was here to do. I honestly thought I was losing my mind…but somehow that information gave me the courage to carry on and subsequently got into the health field of Occupational Therapy.
At 19 I got out of England, emigrated to Canada and this is when life truly started to open up for me.
I had a severely limited set of mental health life skills, and a lot of emotional baggage in my back-pack of life that I carried around. I didn’t know it back then, but I had unconsciously set out on a journey to discover myself. So I went from trying to prove to myself that I am enough, intelligent, worthy, fearless, confident and successful; by getting educational degrees, becoming a Canadian senior health executive of a global corporation, a Canadian skating champion, marathon runner and a single mum of 2 amazing kids; to realizing over many years that I had acquired some very valuable, healthy, strong, mental & emotional skills, life hacks to overcome adversities and change, understandings of how to create sustainable happiness balance and life fulfillment. I had literally created an updated identity for myself that was in complete alignment with who I truly was inside of myself through the creation of daily habits. These had been created over many years but felt absolutely amazing. I eventually became at peace within myself, emotionally grounded and mentally healthy and strong.
HOW I GOT INTO THE INDUSTRY OF LIFE COACHING:
Looking back, it’s no surprise that I took to life coaching. I coached kids in skating as I was a professional skater. As a business executive I had training on how to teach/train and coach, which I applied to all new hires from across Canada. Throughout my children’s developmental years, I successfully counselled their friends and parents who were struggling with their kids and when I transitioned from corporate life to an entrepreneur, it was a natural progression to go from business consulting to executive coaching, which I really enjoyed. But one particular day, I had a phone call that would have such an impact on me to change my focus, direction and passion.
SERVICES AND PROBLEMS I SOLVE:
A young man in his early 20’s contacted me and said “I see that you’re a life coach and I desperately need one.” We agreed to meet up to see if we were a ‘fit’ and then he told me his life story. It was if I was taken back in time to my own, similar experiences. But now I had all the necessary mental, emotional and life hack skills that he very much needed to transition from where he was (which was ‘almost’ living on the street, using drugs, gaming and drinking) to where he could belong, if he chose to do so. What I found to be a great asset was that he had a strong work ethic because he was able to keep down a job as a labourer.
We got to work on providing a ‘SAFE’ place where he could be himself and went from there setting up a future plan together. It was recognized that he required an update of his belief system about himself (low self-esteem, confidence, insecurities and vulnerabilities). One way was by re-training his thinking when he experiences these feelings; teaching him HOW to think not WHAT to think and provided him the ABC’s of how to overcome these states, his challenges and adversities in his life. We created new, very real and positive images of himself when his old belief system came knocking in his mind. Once he started to tackle these successfully, his emotions began to shift. He started to learn to stop himself from reacting and instead started to respond to life and slowly began to make better choices and decisions from a more positive and powerful place.
Together we created the first set of boundaries for him when managing difficult people (family, friends, work colleagues or supervisors). We worked on calming his anxieties down with the 5,4,3,2,1 sensory method, which he still uses occasionally to this day. We worked on his diet for his physical and mental health resilience and overtime he created an updated identity of himself that he wanted to present to the world through daily habits we created for him.
Then we tackled his lack of desire to go back into an industry which he had ‘failed’ within and created learning habits that allowed him to pass the exam that he much needed (that he was allowed to take for the last time). Today, I am very proud to say that he is working in the medical industry as a very successful Paramedic, has his own apartment, a girlfriend, doesn’t use drugs and has little time for gaming. His work ethic skill-set allowed him to put in a lot of effort he could successfully accomplish what he set out to do. He found a purpose and reached his goals.
Then I offered my online course ‘LIFE FOUNDATIONS – An Update of Your Mental & Emotional Health & Well-Being’ which I had just completed. This was so he could continue to imprint how to think, to bring out his best self, assess beliefs that he needed to let go, manage emotions by moving from a place of reacting to responding in difficult situations, creating best and successful daily habits to show up with in the world, learning how to create sustainable happiness, practicing maintaining personal boundaries, learning how to love himself so he could learn to love another just as well and deep diving into life planning. All of which provided him with a different perspective in how to thrive at life …and not just survive it! I offer this course to everyone who chooses to update their mental and emotional health in this ever-changing environment that is requiring more effective mental health skills.
I have a purpose and passion to help clients successfully achieve and my intuitive guidance skills is what sets me apart when coaching my clients; because I have found that 9 times out of 10, I intuitively know what they ‘need’ when they think they know what they ‘want’ to be successful in areas of their life.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
For me resilience is the ability to recover quickly from difficulties, adversities or challenges in life and today we live in an era where this is a must-have skill in life, business and relationships as we manage change every day of our lives.
Initially, my resilience was developed as a child and youth through regular emotional knock downs; like asking for birthday parties every year and being told ‘No;’ asking my dad to go to parent teacher night and excuses always were made; wanting friends to come over to hang out and then being embarrassed at what was said to them about me so I wouldn’t bring them back over; or being made to regularly beg for money in front of people for personal items. These experiences certainly played a role in creating grit. But it necessitated my having to acquire a resilience skill to effectively overcome emotional hurts, anxiousness, fear and feelings of depression; so I could bounce back quickly from being in a place of despair.
I can remember looking out at the world from my bedroom and saying to myself: “out there in this huge world has to be a far better place than where I am. I can look at things as a tragedy or no matter how small things happen that make me feel good, I can take-away the best of those things every moment of everyday they happen. ” So, I began to look at my situation from a different lens and the world from a perspective of it being brighter. I became grateful every time a little something happened that ‘made my day.’
If I was told that I had ‘failed,’ I would look at it as though it was just another test for me to learn more. If I was emotionally berated, I looked on it as someone who was in their own bad place, was lashing out and needed their own help. I shifted my perspective and was able to become a lot more resilient in my life.
Fast forward, as a Canadian senior health executive, managing hundreds of people across the country, many who had strong personalities, I was able to apply my skill of resilience to challenging individuals and able to look behind the behavior that was demonstrated and recognize what was really going on. I became unfazed with employee drama and got down to the real issues that were bothering them to find solutions. Overtime this became more fun than it was challenging or overwhelming.
Then years later I read what a US university business professor, SriKumar Rao, had to say about what I was really doing:
“There are 3 ways to cultivate a new way of thinking-or seeing things from a difference lens”
1. ‘Don’t label something as bad if down the road it could be a good thing’
2. ‘Is there anyway something you see now as bad could turn out good someday?’
3. ‘What can I (or my team) do to make a scenario come about? How can we change things up to be a good thing that we can celebrate someday?’
Learning to be resilient and viewing experiences from a different lens was a GREAT THING!
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I do believe that my changing lives profession chose me from the time I was 16. I just didn’t know it! There came a time when I had another one of those many AH HAA moments. I was a business consultant, acting predominantly as a life coach, needing to change to this business focus, but not having the know-how as to how I go about promoting myself in this area of specialty It was 2017/18 and social media platforms, promotions, advertising were all abuzz and for me it was a really daunting task to even think about taking on the social media world, when I had absolutely no presence, no knowledge about how to even get started, I was older and my children were at university far away and couldn’t really help me.
After several months of questioning myself, talking to close colleagues who were so supportive of my getting into life coaching (as they had all been recipients of my councel), that I decided one day, out of the blue, to take on this mammoth quest to learn all I could about the social, audio, digital media world; so I could start to think about how I could transition my business and feel confident promoting online.
It took me over 18 months of daily webinars, you-tube video’s, attending online seminars, reading everything I could to get a BASIC understanding of how this social media animal operated and I became a sponge as I slowly set up my platforms. This was so overwhelming as they are all unique, requiring different criteria to post and promote and I needed to learn how to create the type of content people want to read or listen to so I could generate business opportunities. This new business promotional focus was nothing like I was used to, I hadn’t been brought up with it and had never been so overwhelmed in my life for such a long time!
Having said this, it also expanded my mind, got me laser focused on promo design, messaging, call to actions and transitioning from viewers to buyers! It pushed me into learning a whole different skill set that provided me new avenues of opportunities of teaching. It was only later that I realized that this isn’t how you turn readers into buyers…but this is another story!
By the end of 2019 I had learned how to set up all my platforms, designed my own ads/promotions and had learned to feel more confident on camera, creating 30 second-20 mins videos of life hacks, learned about lighting, basic video editing and got myself onto apps that could help me save time. Although I did all the wrong things (you don’t know what you don’t know).
It was a very challenging 18 months and it didn’t generate a lot of business, but I learned tons.
If I hadn’t changed course to learn a social media development skill-set or achieved the confidence behind a camera, I likely wouldn’t have created my 8-week online course, Life Foundations – An Update of your Mental & Emotional health & Well-Being, or had the confidence to create my new website blog or agree to creating a podcast, Optimizing Human Potential; where I’ll be inviting parents, young adults, professionals and individuals who can provide insights, support, information, solutions to those facing adversities and everyday challenges.solutions, knowledge and wisdoms, while having fun.
Change in life is ALWAYS constant. If you can learn to effectively navigate change, you’re on the right road to success and balance.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.accessanngerrard.com
- Instagram: https://www.Instagram.com/accessann.g
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/accessanng
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ann-gerrard-67943724
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9aIXIGxpIY6eRmjbvVofrw
- Other: Google: Life Coach Ann Gerrard https://lifefoundations.heightsplatform.com/courses/life-foundations/preview https://www.facebook.com/groups/bustthemyth/ (Young Adult Private Group) https://holistictherapiesdirectory.com/ontario/mississauga/life-coaches/ann-gerrard