We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Charlotte Gray. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Charlotte below.
Charlotte, appreciate you joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.
I have taken many risks throughout my life, including having IVF late in my life and despite being told I had a 5% chance of success. I really wanted to be a mom, which was one of the best risks I ever took. It miraculously and joyfully resulted in the birth of my twin daughters, Katie and Sydney. I was truly blessed.
My mother, who had been my only family up until then, died 11 days after their birth, and their father and I split up when the girls were 18 months old. He moved back to England for several years, and I essentially became a single mother.
I thought about going to graduate school to become a psychotherapist. However, I had returned to a previous career as a legal secretary/paralegal and was working full-time to support my little family. So the idea of working full time, going to school, and being a good mother to my toddler twin daughters was out of the question. Yet, I knew I could not happily continue doing what I was doing without carving out a new future for myself and my girls.
I had spent the previous decade in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles working for some of Hollywood’s top TV producers and writers and eventually pursuing an acting career (always a risk!). Working in entertainment was exciting, and I loved it, and returning to the law was not something I had ever anticipated.
In my acting training with some of LA’s finest teachers, I learned that authenticity and vulnerability are necessary to create memorable and believable characters that move audiences. It’s a process and a courageous journey to do so, and as I grew as an actress so had my life! And then I had the thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful to offer acting to anyone looking to grow as a person? This was the seed of an idea for a workshop I created called, “Acting For Non-Actors and Bashful Beginners”!
I designed this workshop to help any adult who as a child may have caught the acting bug but was forced into other more “serious” careers by their parents revisit their childhood passion. I knew from my own experience that once you fall in love with acting, the craving doesn’t go away. It’s in you, forever.
I also wanted to help adults who were curious and wanted to take an acting class but were intimidated to walk into a hard-core “professional” acting class get an introduction to acting in a safe environment. I figured if I could create a part-time workshop business that would generate a full-time income, I could go to school and be a good mother to my baby girls. I could do it and have it all! I went to work to make it happen!
I rented time in a dance studio and relied on advertising back then to fill my workshops. They filled up with students from mixed backgrounds that included lawyers, entrepreneurs, doctors, graphic artists, and everyday working adults. One workshop included a soldier on leave and a young woman who flew in from Switzerland to attend my training.
Students showed up to their first class looking like deer in headlights, and by the second class they were fighting to get up on stage, and when it was over they were asking what else I had! I said, “I’ll get back to you!”!
And that is how The Acting Place, my former acting studio in Los Angeles, was born! I was working full-time at the law firm while marketing my workshop and teaching it on weekends. I eventually took the big risk of leasing a space and built it out into a black-box studio with a stage, rehearsal space, and office. It was fabulous and beyond anything I had expected ever to be doing!
Eventually, it was time to leave my day job to run my enterprise. The Acting Place grew into a full-fledged acting studio with multiple teachers and included children’s classes and even a summer camp. It was amazing and I loved watching my students grow as actors and as individuals.
One of my physician students told me that his experience with me and my classes had released him from his lifelong social anxiety. He had never intended to pursue an acting career but the work he did in class grew him enormously. And, of course, many of my actors did end up pursuing acting careers and loving their new identities!
And here I was, acting teacher and business owner! I loved teaching but after a few years, I was yearning for something more. I had not gone to grad school as planned, but helping people become fully self-expressed and the best version of themselves is what truly excites me and makes me feel most on purpose.
One day, pondering what else I could do, I was in a bookstore and saw a book on one of the tables entitled, “Fearless Living” by Rhonda Britten. I had developed a fear of flying phobia and thought maybe the book could help me with that. I bought it, took it home, started reading it, and couldn’t put it down! It had nothing to do with phobias!!
It was all about how to take risks and jump fully into life! The book was simple but profound and had tools for change. I felt it shaved 20 years off of therapy. The author’s name was in the back of the book and I called her! I had no idea what I was going to say, I just had to know who wrote this life-changing book! I called and Rhonda answered and we started talking. It turned out we knew a few people in common and she mentioned that she was just closing out one of her first coach training programs. I didn’t hesitate. I said, “Sign me up”!
That was 21 years ago and I haven’t looked back. Coaching allows me to transform people’s lives from the inside out, much like acting, but with different goals. And unlike psychotherapy, instead of focusing on the past, I help my clients create amazing new futures.
As I trained to become a Fearless Living® Coach, I continued teaching acting. I now had two businesses I was running and juggling the marketing was becoming challenging for me.
So, when the lease for my studio came up for renewal that year, I had a decision to make. I asked for a “sign” and got it. I knew the difficult decision I was making was the right one for me and my family.
I went into my ongoing scene study class that week and made the crushing announcement that this would be our last month together. Many of my students by then had been with me for years. I assuaged my guilt of the jolting news by helping them each find new teachers to continue their journey as actors, and I went home to my daughters and set up a home office.
It was wonderful to work from home while raising my girls and having the time and ability to attend all their school and extracurricular events. From the very beginning of my coaching career, I have worked over the phone, which allows me to work with clients all over the world!
In time I trained in other modalities to address the limiting beliefs and trauma that hide out in the subconscious mind and are the main source of people’s self-sabotage and self-destructive patterns. Without addressing and transforming the conflicting beliefs in the subconscious mind, permanent change and transformation become an ongoing challenge.
With Rapid Transformation Therapy (RTT®) and HeartHealing™ I am able to help my clients identify the root cause of their difficulties, transform their thinking and perspective, and get rapid results!
I do this subconscious work over Zoom and work with clients all over the world. I am currently working with a client in England and have had clients as far away as South Africa.
Life is a succession of choices and risks that lead to new experiences, some good and some maybe not so good. These were great risks that bore excellent results, and I am grateful for them all!
Charlotte, 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?
When I transitioned from Acting Teacher/Studio Owner into a full-time Life Coach, I quickly knew that I had found my true purpose. The name of my acting studio was, The Acting Place, and the name of my coaching business has been from day one, Act Now Coaching. It started as a play on words, but the truth is, without action, nothing changes!
Today, as a Fearless Living® Coach, Hypnotherapist, and Life and Career Strategist,
I love working with high-achieving women who on their ambitious journey to career success may discover that despite having all the external perks, their life is out of balance and they are feeling disconnected from an essential part of themselves, or that something is missing from their life.
I also love working with ambitious women who find themselves stuck in some area of their lives and need clarity and support on their next steps. Perhaps they are stuck on a rung of the corporate ladder or they are yearning to transition into entrepreneurism.
As a Fearless Living® Coach, I help you take risks and move forward despite their fears. As a hypnotherapist, I help you identify and transform the blocks hidden below the surface of your mind so that you can easily move forward and achieve the outcomes you seek. And, as a Life and Career Strategist, I help you map out your next steps and successfully navigate new and unknown territories with courage and self-belief.
As a coach, I am a conduit for truth – yours and mine! And watching life after life transform before my eyes was and is still today deeply magical and soul-rewarding. Helping my clients come home to who they truly are and who they are meant to be in their lives is what motivates me and keeps me changing lives.
Client Story:
My client Julie came to work with me not because anything was wrong with her life, but because she had a restless feeling inside and knew that there was more for her, she just didn’t know what it was. Life was overall pretty good.
She was excellent at sales and already had a 6-figure income. She wanted to change companies and industries. With all my clients, I’m always working with them on mindset and taking them through my 5-step transformational process, but at the same time, we work on whatever transition or transformation they want help with.
I helped Julie strategize her job change, role-play interviews, and debrief after. Within 3 months, Julie had changed companies, changed industries, and tripled her 6-figure income.
In the course of our work, Julie mentioned that she wasn’t at all creative. That caught my ear and we explored that limiting belief. It turned out that her father when she was a small child had said something about her not having a creative bone in her body, and she took his words as truth.
She had gone through life very LEFT-brained and it had served her well. However, once we dispelled the myth and false belief that she wasn’t creative, she was able to create a life vision that included traveling the world and doing wildlife photography.
Since then, Jule retired from sales at a young age, she’s written a book on sales, and she now travels the world taking fantastic, award-winning wildlife photos. She is getting ready to publish her first book of photographs.
My client went from ordinary to extraordinary by dispelling her personal myths, daring to dream big, and by taking focused action.
Today, my signature system, Courage2BeYou™, changes lives from the inside out. It is a powerful transformative program that brings you home to your true self and helps you step into a soul-driven life that fulfills you on all levels.
Alignment of head, heart, and soul, is the key to having the life you want. Without it, nothing truly works in life. It can feel like you are pushing a boulder up a hill and hoping you don’t lose your grip along the way! Alignment creates flow and ease and the pathway to a magnificent life!
Once there is alignment, getting clear on your next steps and creating a powerful vision for your life becomes easy. And by the end of Courage2BeYou™, my clients have all the tools needed to live into it. By the end of the program, they look back to the day they said “Yes” to themselves by signing up to work with me and barely recognize the woman they were back then.
Courage2BeYou™ is a journey of self-discovery and personal empowerment. It is a blueprint for getting unstuck, and living an authentic life, the one your soul is calling you to live!
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
As I shared in the first question of this interview, when my twin girls were 18-months old, I became a single mother.
During that time, I started two successful businesses, The Acting Place and Act Now Coaching. When I closed the acting studio and focused on life coaching, my business rapidly grew and was very successful. For years, I helped hundreds of men and women transform their lives.
I was doing so well and the kids were growing along with the economy at that time. I decided as I like to say, 5 minutes before the Big Recession, to jump into real estate investing with both feet while leveraging my assets. Needless to say, I took a major financial hit and lost pretty much all of my financial assets, including our family home.
This was an unfortunately timed risk that I took and one where I lost.
I was devastated and in a state of shock. My kids were in high school looking toward college. One of the reasons I had chosen to invest was to make sure I had money for their college educations.
The shame and guilt were enormous and depression hit. I felt like a complete failure and was so embarrassed. Our lives were completely turned around. We moved from our house to an apartment, luckily in the same school district. I was too embarrassed to tell my clients what was going on and as our work completed, I let my business slip away, except for a very small number of clients I continued to work with.
I took a survival job and stayed for too long, SUFFERING SILENTLY. And unnecessarily. I was consumed by SHAME, GUILT, and… FEAR. All this, even though I, as a Fearless Living® Coach, knew more tools for being fearless than the average person. The biggest mistake I made, however, was cutting myself off from my social structure. I was hiding out alone, in fear and shame.
Finally, I met a coach that I resonated with and decided to hire him. I didn’t have the money at the time to afford coaching, but I had just enough to get started with a wing and a prayer. I knew something had to change and that I couldn’t do it alone. “No one can be fearless alone,” my mentor Rhonda had drilled into me. CLEARLY, I HAD FORGOTTEN THAT AND MOST EVERYTHING ELSE I KNEW! That’s what happens when fear has its way with you.
When you work with a coach, they really see who you are and your greatness and help bring it out of you. This is exactly what I do with my clients, but I needed another professional to do this for me! Soon, the healing momentum happened quickly. I saw how I was keeping myself stuck and started rebuilding my business and my life. If it hadn’t been for hiring my coach, I wouldn’t be in business today and sharing this interview.
You see, FEAR is as smart as you and as cunning as you. It knows your every move and is working hard to make sure that you don’t step out of what we call your comfort zone – that place ordinary people reside most of the time with patterns of behavior they can predict and that they know will not subject them to failure, rejection or the word “no.”
These are all things we experience first before the age of 7 and when fear is awakened and set about creating our comfort zone, which is that internal safety net that when we are about to do something daring or out of the ordinary we start to fill with self-doubt and ominous internal messages such as “ Who do you think you are?… What will people think?… You could look foolish… You could fail… What if you get rejected? You could get really hurt… Don’t rock the boat; you could get thrown overboard… or the big “go to” – Things aren’t that bad (yet).”
If you’ve ever experienced any of this kind of inner dialogue, you know what I am talking about. All of that is your buddy fear doing what it thinks is a good thing – keeping you safe. Instead, it’s keeping you small and on the sidelines of the life you could be living. Instead of a player, you become a mere observer. And that’s where I had found myself stuck until I did what I knew to do – get help to come out of hiding from my own greatness.
While it was true I had made a mistake, albeit a rather large one, I was finished letting my past define me and my future and impact the lives of my kids. I shoved fear aside and stepped forward with courage and back into my power. But I couldn’t have done it alone.
And, as an important post-script to this story, both of my girls graduated from university with honors, and are thriving in their lives today, too!
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
When I realized I had no idea how to write or deliver a powerful speech, I joined Toastmasters and did some other speaker training to improve my ability to speak to audiences about what I do and how I can help them.
Speaking has been the best way for me to let people know about me, experience me, and attract new clients. The first time I was invited to speak, it was to a very small group of women, and I was amazed and delighted when three women reached out to me and signed onto my high-ticket coaching program at the time. Speaking has continued to be an excellent way to attract new clients.
During Covid, I spoke virtually and now, I am again starting to speak in person. I am excited for opportunities to spread my message and change people’s lives.
Referrals are also an excellent source of new clients. When I change the life of one family member, other family members take notice of the change in their spouse or adult child and ask to work with me, too!
I am just starting to step into the world of online marketing.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: CharlotteGray.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theteamgray/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teamgray/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-gray-b8994aa/
- Other: The name of my business is Act Now Coaching because, without action, nothing changes. There are links on my website, CharlotteGray.com, to set up a powerful breakthrough call with me for those who are interested in taking steps to transform and change their lives. I also have a link to a special quiz for women who are doing too much: https://www.askthelifecoachnow.com/burnoutquiz And, if anyone is interested in receiving a free transformational recording for “Prosperity, Abundance, and Success,” they can request it by reaching out to me at [email protected] and putting Prosperity Recording in the Subject Line.
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