We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shane Borza. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shane below.

Shane, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Having had many coaches, teachers, senseis, sergeants, and other mentors and leaders in my life who helped impart wisdom, and the ability to go further/faster more easily, I found myself gravitating towards leadership roles in my life. Regardless of whether that was being a sports coach and climbing guide as early as high school and college, in supervisor roles in the military, or as a manager at an international company, this through line led me to professional coaching almost a decade ago.

Not knowing what ‘life coaching’ was when I started, I have shifted many times, to include having seven different certifications in various disciplines. These have enabled me to blend, shift, incorporate, and offer many tools to clients, but was often confusing as I went through it. Now that I am coming up to almost ten years of coaching, and closing in on 9000 client hours, I see that I ‘wandered aimfully’ and am now firmly entrenched in being a Mental Health Coach. Not only does this offering most help my clientele, but is a personal passion.

Shane, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Shane Borza is an ICF certified coach who specializes in helping his clients create breakthroughs and experience their Ultimate Performance. As an expert in both Mind & Body Fitness, he helps people do the deep work to unlock the beliefs, thoughts, and feelings that hold them in positions and behavior that no longer serve them.

A lifelong mountain athlete and creator, he has travelled the world learning how to be the best climber, creator, coach, and husband possible. Through foreign expeditions, long term film and writing projects, working at startups and corporations, teaching at Universities and Colleges, and training Police in the Military, he has learned how to combine the best aspects of Mind, Body & Life so his clients can be their whole – and best – self.

Shane offers a variety of services, depending on the dynamic or client needs and is available for both group and one-to-one services. Additionally, he offers various DIY classes for self study.

Fun Fact: Shane and his wife Joyce had “The World’s First Wedding on El Capitan” in Yosemite National Park. Their award winning feature documentary El Cap Wedding is available on multiple streaming platforms, or you can watch it for free, at: https://youtu.be/cyMJ2dvdauo?si=5GMrV3HgwaCuwJIa

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

My coaching journey has had many shifts in the past, almost decade of professional offering. I started as a Certified Human Potential Coach, with a focus on bio and life hacking so people could have their best performance. This led me to focusing more on dialing in mental health and pursuing training on Psychological Fitness. While I moved up the ranks of ICF (the International Coach Federation) to become an MCC (Master Certified Coach), I found I had to maintain annual training hours and, therefore, took several courses. This enabled me to wander a bit in my training and focus. The most recent example being a two year long certification in Psychological Coach Training.

In looking back, I see I had an almost annual shift in focus and offerings as my logos, website, offers, etc all changed from a focus on physical health, to mental health, to career coaching, to executive coaching, to mentoring, to consulting, and finally, where I am now, to a HIPAA certified Mental Health Coach.

These shifts, or pivots, across the years, have all been within the coaching space, served my clients and interests, and represent both learning and growth opportunities, but also reflect my ability to take on feedback, both from clients, trends, the industry as a whole, and my own interests and strengths.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Taking a cue from Tim Ferriss, I began my coaching practice while I had a full time job. The idea being, rather than work a “five and two” i.e. a Monday through Friday, full time job, with a two day weekend, you instead shift to a “five, one, one”, which gives you one day a week to focus on building your business. Parallel to this was the recommendation, in my ten month long coach training program, to “begin coaching right away” as opposed to waiting the, almost year, to get coaching practice after you graduated.

Combining these approaches meant, not only did I get my professional coach certification, but I also got my ICF (International Coach Federation) cert – which meant I had a minimum of 100 professional coaching hours – in less than a year. All while maintaining a steady income, benefits, and hours from my day job.

After a few years of adding clients in on weekends and after work, I left my day job to work for a coaching company. This was my first remote work position and took some time to adjust to. In hindsight, this was very helpful as I had a behind the scenes look at how a coaching program works from the inside, access to reduced cost training opportunities, excellent mentoring, and steady income.

Parting ways from that gig, I decided to plunge full time into my coaching practice and let go of the day job. This was scary but forced me to get good at things I was “bad at”, as well as do things I didn’t want to. Unfortunately, this coincided with the start of the pandemic so there were several months where there was some panic. The upside to this was an explosion in the need for life coaches, mental health coaches, and the like. Partnering with several EAPs (Employee Assistance Programs) enabled me to ‘turn on the spigot and have as many hours as I could handle.

While the ‘slow build’ approach worked well for me, I do encourage each person to weigh their options as, sometimes it is helpful to speed up, and other times to slow down. In short, move with an eye towards sustainability and growth.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.shaneborza.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shaneborza/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaneborzacoaching
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaneborza/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ShaneBorza
• Other: https://youtu.be/cyMJ2dvdauo?si=QkNL3EGx6aVj1bKD

Image Credits

©2025 Shane Borza Coaching LLC