This is an interview with Kehla Guimond of KehlaG.com.
Hey, Kehla. Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do.
I am certified as a Neuro-Linguistics Practitioner, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Emotional Freedom Techniques Practitioner, Law of Attraction Life Coach and also trained in TIME Techniques, CORE Method, Life/Success Coaching and Reiki Healing.
I would say my zone of genius is helping people discover the best version of themselves in way they never have before. With this, they get to step into fierce alignment with me helping them understand how to program their mind on a subconscious level, while also getting them to connect deeper with themselves on a soul and energy level.
I’m totally in love with both ends of the spectrum with coaching where the soul meets the subconscious and conscious mind in the most powerful and authentic way possible!
How did you get into personal training and build a business around it?
I’ve been an athlete my entire life, but my first love and passion in life was playing rugby.
I started playing in 2003 when I was 13 years old and continued playing for 17 years all across the globe. I played in Victoria BC, Ontario, the USA and China.
I played for teams that have won provincial championships and in tournaments in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle & many more.
From 2009-2015 I played Varsity for the UVic Vike’s Women’s rugby team in Victoria, BC. In 2013 I was selected to play on the National Women’s 7’s rugby team for the University Olympics in Kazan, Russia. Our team was the first team sport in Canadian history to win a place on the podium with a bronze medal.
In 2015 I graduated from UVic with a BEd in Physical Education and French.
Thinking I wanted to be a teacher with a focus on Health and Fitness, I moved to teach in China at a BC curriculum school close to Shanghai.
From 2015-2016, while living in China, I had the joy of traveling in Asia with my fellow colleagues and friends where I visited Hong Kong, Thailand and South Korea.
In 2016 I moved back to Canada and decided I wanted to work more with 1:1 with clients, rather than students, in fitness and health and so begins the new chapter of my life as a Personal Trainer.
This was my first entrepreneurial journey as I had the privilege of working in a busy city right in the heart of Downtown Toronto. This experience as a Personal Trainer had always been a calling for me as I loved health, fitness and coaching.
I grew a successful personal training business for 3 years before deciding to move back to Vancouver, BC with my long-term boyfriend. When I moved, I gave up the Personal Training world and started growing my business online as a Spiritual Mindset Coach.
When did your personal spiritual journey begin and how did it look like?
In Toronto, I noticed I was always stuck in a grind and feeling like I was in fight or flight mode all the time because I lived and worked in all the hustle and bustle.
A lot of my Personal training clients were VPs/CEO’s and just top notch executives in the Financial District so I always had to be ‘switched on’, which was incredibly draining.
I noticed that I was becoming really unhappy and was missing the west coast vibes of being present in nature. It was always an escape for the next vacation to leave the city and even when we’d land back in Toronto, my boyfriend and I would be looking at the next destination the same night we’d get home. It was bad!
In 2017, after a year of living in Toronto, I finally got fed up with being a victim in my current situation. Around this time that I had made this conscious decision to take control of my reality, a friend of mind introduced me to meditation and reiki healing.
She was a fellow colleague of mine at the gym and a very spiritual being. I was drawn to her and just loved her energy. She hosted a ‘bootcamp’ for meditation and I immediately signed up.
From this moment onward I had discovered my ‘haven’ of calmness no matter where I was in the world. This was my first tool into the world of spirituality and energetic healing.
After getting into meditation, I wanted more so I signed up for a Empath’s Workshop through a centre called ‘Soul Space’ in Toronto. I finally felt like I was getting answers to understand why I felt so sensitive and why I felt this strong need for meditation and learning more about grounding myself through spirituality.
The whole experience really just felt like a ‘remembering’ that simply ‘learning about spirituality’.
In January 2019 one of my best friends invited me to attend a free 5 day livestream event with Kathrin Zenkina, better known as Manifestation Babe on the internet, who was teaching about the Law of Attraction and manifestation.
Funnily enough, I had read the secret in 2012, but this world of manifestation and law of attraction had slipped my mind for the last seven years.
At this point, it was like drinking Kool-aid because I was in it to win it. I became completely obsessed with wanting to understand more about the subconscious mind, energy, being a vibrational-match, all things related to manifestating my desired reality into fruition.
It was January 2019 that I finally decided to take the jump and get into the coaching world. I was done with ‘waiting for the right moment’ because I realized that I was simply self-sabotaging myself for the last five years since I knew this was what I wanted to do.
How did you know it was time to enter the coaching industry and what was the turning point?
Backtrack to 2014, I was at a low point in my life and going through some major issues in a few areas of my life when a good friend of mine introduced me to a personal development course called The Landmark Forum.
This program was my first step into the coaching world. This was the first time I had experience with understanding how the mind creates stories, self-limiting beliefs and truly ‘who we are being’ is what in fact creates our reality.
Through the many programs and seminars I did with this company, I had a great deal of exposure to coaching and absolutely loved it.
In the summer of 2014 I had an intuitive hit – ‘Well Kehla, if you love coaching so much, why don’t you become a coach?’. I was excited to have this realization, but also had no idea how I would make it work. I was finishing up my teaching degree at the time and still had Personal Training on the back of my mind.
I continued with the work from Landmark in Victoria, Vancouver and then Toronto as well. I literally spent 5 years self-sabotaging myself that I didn’t know enough, I didn’t have enough experience – so I pursued teaching and then Personal Training, while still doing all this personal development work on the side for myself.
What happened in my later years of Personal Training was that I started to notice a pattern with my clients. The clients who thought highly of themselves, believed they would succeed – essentially, the ones who had a great mindset were the ones that thrived.
This is when I started ‘coaching’ more with my Personal Training and then discovered that really what I wanted was simply to coach.
So full circle now, jump forward to January 2019, I had finally hit another awakening moment where I decided I was going to make this happen.
I was committed to being an entrepreneur and finally dive into building my business. I think the five years of personal development is truly what allowed me to unpack what I had to get out of my way to finally pursue my dream.
What steps did you take to start your coaching business?
In January 2019 when I decided to go all in I shifted how I showed up on social media.
I switched my Instagram account to business and started posting content related to mindset and spirituality. I created a Facebook page related to my business, I created two courses that I launched to gym clients and friends in the spring of 2019 and just really started taking messy action.
I also started my podcast channel: living in fierce alignment in March 2019. This channel is literally my baby and I’m so happy that I started this right when I began my business!
The reality is, I had no idea what I was doing, the fact that I had ten women sign up for my first course ever with no website, no advertising and no real ‘business’ established, was a miracle.
The first time I ever did a livestream was to this group of women who signed up for my course in May 2019. I think really the secret to starting my business was just taking steps forward in the direction I knew I wanted to go in, even though I felt like I was walking in the dark with no path in sight.
Since 2019 I’ve hired coaches for myself, signed up for courses, read a ton of books, listened to podcasts, attended webinars, invested a lot of money into certifications and just continued to unravel this new world of being an entrepreneur.
It’s really a topless mountain, but it’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done – pushing myself into the unknown and just keeping faith in my dream, even when I think there’s no evidence, has paid off dividends.
Read also: How Elley Became a 6-Figure Business Coach at 24
What does a spiritual mindset coach do exactly?
As a Spiritual Mindset Coach, what I do is unify the worlds of spirituality and human behaviour. I help people understand their mind, so that they can connect to their soul on a deeper level, causing permanent shifts in their ways of being.
More specifically, I help people to see and understand why they believe what they do by getting them to uncover their self-limiting beliefs and pull them apart to be restructured into new and empowering beliefs.
When people can understand how their mind works and how they’ve been imprinted from their childhood they can literally discover pieces of themselves, like little strings they get to tug on, that can completely unravel a world from their past that no longer serves them.
This awareness helps them to stop projecting their fears or self-limiting beliefs into the future. They get to intentionally design their life how they want it, not how they ‘think it should be’ based off what they know and have experienced from the past.
The spiritual side of things is what helps me coach clients to get grounded in who they are as there most authentic and full-potential self from an energetic perspective.
Through guided meditations, law of attraction principles and energy healing with reiki, I help people look inward and get reconnected with their inner child so they can heal, get complete and become an energetic match for what it is that they want to manifest into their physical reality.
From this space and blend of mindset and spirituality the people I work with are left empowered to take new action, which ultimately leads them to producing new results in any area of their life.
Who’s your ideal client and how do you find them?
My ideal client is someone who is on a personal growth journey. They’re typically in a challenging chapter of their lives where they feel stuck and are looking to level up physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
They are willing, ready and possibly already doing the work to uncover what they feel is holding them back in life.
My clients are ambitious, they’re brave, they’re committed and they’re open minded to see things differently. These are people who are willing to show up for themselves even when it feels like the world is pushing up again them.
With my personal training background, I’ve worked with a lot of clients who want the holistic approach of being physically active while also shifting their mindset.
I’ve done full on life coaching with clients who are doing personal training where I’ll write them a program, set them up with goals/habits and then also have calls with them about causing breakthroughs in their career, relationships, self-love, money mindset, etc.
What I’m noticing now is that I’ve been dabbling more on the side of helping entrepreneurs get started with their businesses.
I spent a lot of years, like decades of my life working jobs and careers that I hated so if I have the chance to light a fire under someone’s ass to start a business, be self-employed, have an uncapped salary and gain freedom with their time like they would never have in the corporate world – I’ll push them!
Read also: How Desirée Went From Losing Her Passion for Life to Becoming a Successful Mindset Coach
What services do you offer exactly?
I have a few group coaching programs. The first one is four weeks long and is called Fierce Living. It’s really all about the foundations of shifting your mindset and tapping into the depths of self love.
I coach about how the mind create stories, forgiveness, gratitude, goal setting and meditation. This is the perfect program for someone who is newer to the personal development world and wants a blueprint for how they can begin their journey.
My second program is called Fierce Manifestations and it’s an 8 week group coaching program all about Manifestation in all areas of life: career, relationships, body/intuitive eating, and money.
This program is designed to completely rewrite all these areas of life and intentionally manifest what it is you’d desire as well. It’s a great program for getting into alignment!
I also offer 1:1 coaching which is a very personalized approach. This is where I’ll work 1:1 with clients via zoom-calls, VIP messaging and offer parts of my programs if they’re interested, plus customized content as well to assist with their reflections between calls.
In my 1:1 coaching opportunities I’m able to go deeper with clients and this is where I bring in all my NLP, EFT, CORE/TIME, Reiki, LOA coaching skills for whatever it is they need support in.
My latest group coaching program is with my business bestie who is also a Mindset and Business Coach. This program is called ‘C.E.O’ and it’s all about: creation, embodiment and overflow for the soulful entrepreneur who’s ready to take their life and business to the next level.
We’re super excited about this program because we’re totally bringing the worlds of spirituality and business together to help newer entrepreneurs get their feet off the ground.
How did you grow your brand online in such a competitive field?
Something that I love to talk about is this idea of ‘competition’ – thanks to my major mentors Kathrin and Amanda, I don’t believe in competition and I don’t mean this from a place of arrogance.
I grew up as a competitive athlete and so I know what it means to be competitive and to beat the other team and ‘be the best’.
What I love most about being an entrepreneur is that, there’s no competition because we are each our own unique imprint in the field. No one will be able to coach like I do and vice versa – I truly believe that if someone resonates with me or someone else, then they’ll gravitate to that person naturally and that’s what’s meant to be.
I find this so liberating because then all I have to do is just stay in my own lane, write my own rules, create my own content and show up as my authentic self and it’s more than enough.
How do you make sure a coaching client is a good fit for you?
I think the key word is that people need to be ready.
What I mean by that is that they’re fed up with where they’re at. They are aware that they have blindspots in their life and they know that they need a coach to help them uncover what it is they need to discover in order to shift in their life.
I don’t believe in chasing clients. I spent a lot of time chasing clients in the Personal Training world and it’s because it was a numbers game – this is not a numbers game. It comes down to whether or not that client’s desires are a priority or not.
As a coach, as much as I love the success of my clients, they always have to want it more for themselves than I do for them. This is how I know they’re ready – they’re willing to do whatever it takes to show up for themselves mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.
Do you think anyone can benefit from a mindset coach?
100% yes. Despite being someone who is deep into personal development and is highly trained and self aware, it still blows my mind when I’m working with my coach and she helps me lift the veil to depths of myself that have been hiding from my awareness.
It’s kind of like going to the dentist. You can brush and floss your teeth all you want, but there’s always going to be those hard spots that you just can’t reach on your own – no one can deny that!
What are your favorite spiritual practices?
I meditate like clockwork every morning. I recently hit my 500th day meditation streak and don’t plan on stopping any time soon!
When I meditate in the morning I also do self-reiki and will journal a gratitude list and anything else that comes up on my mind for that day.
I also love vision boards. I created not one, but two huge ones full of beautiful pictures on my wall. I love tying in all the senses to spiritual practice – visualizing through mediation, smelling incredible candles/incense/palo Santo/sage in my office, physically writing or creating a vision board.
From an auditory perspective, I also love to record podcast episodes (or in general, listen to podcast episodes of my mentors). I have a series of episodes that are guided meditations and hypnosis on my channel: living in fierce alignment.
I think the biggest thing for me with spiritual practice is not making it too routine. Sometimes I use journal prompts, sometimes I free-write or have divine downloads come through me. Sometimes I listen to a guided meditation, or I’ll do a silent meditation.
It’s good to switch things up, while also being consistent at the same time.
Also read: The Meaning Behind Angel Numbers and How They Can Transform Your Life
What’s your advice for people who want to re-align their lives?
The messier you get, the more you can rearrange in your life.
Doing the grunt work and being consistent with it essentially guarantees that your success is inevitable. Being intentional and choosing what you want for yourself and your life and rejecting the rest will be the best thing you ever do for yourself in the long run.
What’s next for you and your business?
I’m committed to continuing my own personal growth journey so that I can continue to be a leader and an example for others!
In 2021 I’m keeping my eye on getting certified in Human Design because I find this absolutely fascinating. I’m also obsessed with learning – cue in my list of certifications and no-surprise-teaching-background.
I will obviously be continuing with my spiritual journey. I’m considering getting my Reiki Masters and I’m looking at doing an ayahuasca ceremony to go deeper into my own inner child healing.
I truly believe that as a coach we can only take our clients as far as we’re willing to go – so I plan to go far!
In terms of business, I will be launching more group programs this year and relaunching my earlier programs as well.
I also plan to infuse more love into my podcast by inviting more people on for interviews and continue to feed in incredible content for my audience and listeners. I’m so thankful that I started this channel when I did because it’s basically turned into a wicked self-help encyclopedia for my listeners on their personal growth journey!
You can find me on Instagram @kehlag, my website: http://www.kehlag.com, my Facebook group: Mindset, Miracles and Manifestation and of course on my podcast channel: living in fierce alignment!
