From Engineer to Healer: Flavia Goldenberg’s Coaching Journey

 In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, host Anni sits down with Flavia Goldenberg, a professional certified coach who blends systemic coaching, personal development, and holistic energy work to create transformative results. Flavia shares her journey from engineer to healer, the lessons she’s learned about charging clients fairly, leveraging past experiences, overcoming loyalty patterns, and building a coaching business that prioritizes both strategy and energy. Tune in to discover how to evolve your coaching practice, honor your unique background, and make a lasting impact without burning out.


Connect with

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/flaviagoldenberg/
Website: https://www.flaviagoldenberg.com/

Transcript

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 0:00

I've learned a lot with the systemic approach about charging our clients. First thing, as I said, we didn't start from scratch. Even if you are and rephrasing what I said before, even if you are young, you have experience, you have a life, you know? So you have important experiences to share and you have a repertoire. When you start working, you can always give like, and as I did that, I give discounts. So I say my fee is, for instance, $100, give you 30% discount.

Davis Nguyen : 0:36

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Win, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight-figure career coaching businesses myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, go discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Anni: 1:07

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets. My name is Annie, and today's guest is Flavia Goldenberg. She is a professional certified coach who helps people and teams transform from inside out by blend by blending systemic coaching, personal development, and holistic energy work into powerful, life-changing growth. Welcome, Flavia. How are you?

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 1:33

Hey, Annie. Thank you for having me. And um, it's a great pleasure to share some experiences with your audience. And I'm doing pretty fine. Thank you.

Anni: 1:44

I'm really excited to get to know about you and how you got started because you could have been anything in this world, and you chose to be a coach and you chose to turn it into a business. I'm super curious. What inspired you?

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 1:59

Well, a lot of things. Um, but I I should start by the beginning. And um, I chose at first to be an engineer. Yes. And um that is because I wanted something that could stretch my mind to be more flexible, to see things from different perspectives, to be more abstract. And it was not about the the label of the career, but more the concept and the skills that I would develop. And after that, I went to study communication, and after that I had a master in sustainability management. So I've been working on the corporate world. I worked in the corporate world for more than 35 years. Coaching people, my team. I was an entrepreneur as well, so I had to coach my employees. I wanted them to be most of all fulfilled, feel fulfilled, and to evolve, to be better, better professionals, not only for my company, but for the market. And I was very proud when when someone was invited to work in a multinational company, in you know, top leadership roles and everything. So that always felt good for me. And um, somehow I was always being asked for and mentoring. So it was very natural for me when I decided to go for a plan B, like to become a coach.

Anni: 3:43

That's amazing. I feel like you've always put yourself in a position to expand your mind, and therefore it attracted a lot of people to come to you and say, Hey, I want to do the same thing. I'm very inspired by you, and I know you're the leader to help me expand my mind. How did you know that you can turn it into a business?

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 4:06

Well, when I decided to move to Miami, I'm originally from Brazil, and um, me and my husband, we decided to to move to Miami, and I I was working at Schneider Letter, and I didn't know how they would react because there was no position in the United States for me to move to. But I had to figure out why what what am I going to do? What is my next step? And while I was doing coaching, because I I I had a coach to help me to envision that path, right? What kind of path should I go? And she she told me, You are already a coach, you are already a healer. And I said, A healer? I'm an engineer, I'm not a healer, I'm not in the health industry. And um it was was so interesting because she said, You don't know yet, but you are a healer. And and I said, Okay, okay. Like a little bit like a weird thing. I didn't expect it. But um I started to try to understand what was my role. I've always been attached to to quantum therapies, like Reiki and Acompuncture and all these alternatives that nowadays we call them integrative, not alternative anymore. They are integrative because they integrate different aspects of our bodies, our souls, our emotions. But I was already doing that for myself, but I needed to understand which would be the technique that I would adopt as a profession. So all that came, just to make sense of all this, all that came because I knew and I felt on myself that not only the goals or the strategies would make me succeed, but also my energy. You know, without the energy to move, without the energy to to evolve, you can have the best strategy or the right goals, but you are not getting there. So I decided to mix the quantum therapies with the coaching. That was my my first thought. How could I help my clients to go for their goals without burning out, without feeling frustrated, without feeling they are they were not enough or they didn't have energy enough to get there?

Anni: 6:55

I love that you're able to identify the that strategy is important, but energy is just as important for your clients. I'm wondering how do your clients find you, or like what is your type of client specifically?

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 7:13

Well, my my work grew based on word of mouth. And um, of course, I had a very good reputation along the 35 years that I mentioned working with people, I built a very strong reputation. As I as I told you, I was already being, you know, asked to coach and to mentor people, and it was just natural, it was organic. Oh, that's beautiful. Yes. And one thing that I think it's very important for those who are listening to us is to understand that you do not let yourself behind. Like I didn't leave the engineer, I didn't leave the top leader, I didn't leave the sustainability manager, I didn't leave the the marketing and the communication uh piece of me behind. I brought all this with me. So I didn't start from scratch because some people think that they are when they start a new profession, they are starting from scratch, and we are not. We integrate, as I said, everything we know, and by doing that, we create a unique way of coaching, right? So it's exactly your background that makes you special and unique. What I hear from a lot of clients when they come to me and they are transitioning from not only for coaching but other kinds of professions, you know. Some people are transitioning, they say, How do I leave this behind? How I change, you are not changing, you are evolving. You are becoming someone more complete, you know, and not less, you're not leaving anything behind. And and there comes a piece of me that I was very afraid of doing, but at the same time I had the courage to do it that was to charge my clients a fair value. You know, because sometimes people, when they come to me, they're transitioning from one career to the other, they say, Oh, I'm going to charge much less than the other, much less than the market because I'm beginning. But you are not beginning from scratch. You have a lot of experience. Unless you are like, you know, very, very, very young and you don't have any experience, you are always editing or building out on something.

Anni: 9:50

That is true. I I love that you never just start from a blank slate, you start, you already have so much experience that you bring to the table. And you mentioned charging the clients, and I know that a lot of uh coaches have a bit of uh confidence imposter syndrome with this. And I was wondering, how do you think about your package? How do you think about charging? Um, what is the structure? You don't have to share hard numbers, but I like to know how you think about it.

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 10:18

Yeah. And I do systemic work as well, and uh I've learned a lot with the systemic approach about charging our clients. So for a thing, as I said, we didn't start from scratch. Even if you are, and rephrasing what I what I said before, even if you are young, you have experience, you have a life, you know? So you have important experiences to share, to share, and you have a repertoire, right? And um when you start working, you can always give, like, and as I did that, I give discounts. So I say, my my fee is, for instance, a hundred dollars, give you 30% discount because I'm um on the on the first sessions, can um try you, can experiment, and then we go to the regular price. So this gives you more confidence when you are lacking confidence in charging people. So they see an advantage, and you are really being honest that you will do that for a while, but it's not forever, right? This is the first thing. Another thing that was very interesting was when you are studying, even when I was studying the quantum therapies and also coaching, you are asked to do some some coaching and some sessions to prove that you can do it and to have your certification, right? And it's always good also to tell people, wow, as you were my guinea pig during my course, now I'm going to give you a discount because you deserve it. You help me to get here. So for a certain amount of sessions, I'm going to give you a discount. So you always incentive people that were your guinea piggies to, you know, to become your clients.

Anni: 12:21

That's that's another another Yeah, it's like a reward, you know, for taking this chance and trying something new. For your sessions, do you do one-on-one coaching group or masterminds or retreats? How do you um do your offers?

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 12:41

I offer one-on-one and groups online always. Uh, I rarely do in person. And one thing else that I wanted to mention about price that I didn't mention is that from the systemic approach perspective, if we don't charge what we think we deserve, is because sometimes it's because we are not humble enough to receive. So we think we are heroes, we can heal the world, we can do everything for everybody, and we don't need anything from anybody. More or less like that. So sometimes if you have difficulties in charging, you should verify, like you should try to understand if you are trying to be the strongest one in the relationship. Because a client can say no, I can't pay, and you can give a discount if you want, but you don't have to guess it. You don't have to take it like as a truth if you didn't ask for exactly what you think you deserve.

Anni: 13:53

Mm-hmm. You have to stand by what you think you deserve and and and build upon that. Hmm, that's some really good advice, which brings me to a bigger picture of where you want to take your go your your coaching business in two years. What is your biggest dream that you have? Yeah. Do you have desires to scale, to hire, or a hidden ambition that no one knows about?

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 14:26

Well, I some some years uh a few years ago, I had a dream of making coaching more accessible for everyone. And um I think AI is somehow helping people to get some kind of guidance, which I like because I think it now it until a certain level, you can use AI to to help you to explore alternatives and to and to help you think if you use AI as a co co-partner, like a partner, a thinking partner, right? Yes, yes. So nowadays, what I what I look for is to work for very, very top leaders that can change significantly the world.

Anni: 15:19

Mmm. So helping leaders expand their abilities so that they can reach and impact more people. Wow, that's very, very smart, smart way of touching more lives.

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 15:32

Yes, because I don't I don't aim for volume, I aim for quality and for impact. And sustainable impact. So I I wanna work on conscious leadership, and by having more conscious leaders in the world that will impact like thousands of lives, we will have a better world, a better, you know, better comp better corporations, better everything.

Anni: 16:02

Well, that is really beautiful. One of our core beliefs and mission here at Career Coaching Secrets is to impact one billion lives by helping the people that help people. Coaches. We help coaches expand their leads, their marketing, their systems in order to be able to help billions of people. So I'm really glad that we're on the same same path. I love that you think about it not in terms of how many people can I help, but who can I strategically help that can impact more people? That's really, really smart way to think about it. I kind of wanted to go into something that is probably more harder for most people in their coaching businesses, which is like pain points. Is there some pain point in your business right now that might be like surprising or you didn't expect?

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 17:02

I didn't expect. Well, I think that speed is something that um nowadays is something that is annoying me a little bit. Like things are so fast, and at the same time I love it because I am very dynamic and I like things to happen fast, but at the same time, time is time management is is a lot, you know, it's it's a bigger challenge nowadays. So I I would I would point time as one of my biggest pain points nowadays.

Anni: 17:37

I'm so curious. Do you mean time management with say your coaching students or running your your business like operationally? Where is the time that feels the most stretched right now?

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 17:53

I would say there are some things that I would love to do more. So I would love to learn more, to have more time to learn new things. These last weeks I've been very into AI and how to to work and to make it work better for me. But I I also love neuroscience. I also love you know how to understand how the world is evolving and to, you know, learn different tools as well. So learning is a piece of my like life that is very important for me. I have the clients, and of course, I need to balance the time that I am with my clients and my family. Yeah, so I love to travel. I have I have my family all over the place. So I have a stepdaughter in Australia, a stepson in Spain, my son is in Brazil, I have a granddaughter in Spain, a granddaughter in Brazil, my parents are in Brazil, so I love traveling, and family is also giving me time, allowing me to be with them and to be traveling and visiting new places. I love to visit new places. So I think that time is is a big issue nowadays.

Anni: 19:22

I really resonate with that. You talk about such important things in your life, which is just having time for your clients, of course. You know, that's our mission, but having time for ourselves and our family and our passion and learning and growing. And I feel like since you were a kid, you've always wanted to expand your mind being an engineer and going into healing. So I see how that's really, really important to you. And I'm wondering what what's taking up most of the time right now that you could be using better, you know, spending it with your family is it with maybe like operational stuff or doing sales calls. I'm curious. Yeah. Or the marketing.

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 20:09

Yeah, no, I I as I said, I think that learning is my my most important uh part that I I wanted to dedicate dedicate more time. I learned a lot. I I have a lot of courses and and um a lot of certificates um but what I what I wanted what I did in reality regarding my my profession my my practice is to integrate as I said so um I integrate the coaching with the quantum therapies and the constellations and one thing that that uh nowadays is is like I'm spending a lot of time on is like the constellations because the constellations they are they are a tool to reveal patterns to reveal blockages so sometimes as I said you have your goals you have your strategy but it's not working you don't know why it's not working you you put a lot of effort you do everything right you have everything that you had to have but um you're not getting there you are not achieving your full potential and sometimes it has to do with your ancestral lineage your hidden loyalties your yes because sometimes you know if you come from um a family where where everybody was like um working on on big corporations they were very successful and you decide to be like an independent professional like a dentist or a lawyer or or a coach you may be sabotaging yourself in the name of loyalty that you are not you are not like your family you don't belong to your system for example so understanding that that pattern understanding that blockage you can transform you can honor your system you can honor where you came from and move on and ask for permission to be different right and to belong so you were different you can belong.

Anni: 22:38

Wow I feel like you you were giving that piece of advice specifically for me because it really hit home for me as an Asian American woman being that it means that you have to be very loyal to your mother and your father there's this uh piety that's what it's called where you are deeply loyal to your parents and it makes it hard for you to stand out as an individual right and so I see a lot of Asians kind of just stay smaller you know instead of expressing their own opinions and their own personalities because they represent their family and they wouldn't want them to look bad or look down on them.

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 23:19

So that really hit hard with me you know I appreciate you for sharing that kinds of loyalties you know yeah we have loyalty for not having money like you said staying small we have loyalty for you know even diseases you see patterns in families with diseases you see patterns in families with bankruptcy yes yes so those are really hard ones uh overcome yes but once you see and you acknowledge because it's not by repeating what's not helpful that will will give you the the belonging you know the sense the feeling of belonging and you can attach that to the system and you can belong to the system by looking at the bright side of it you know and oh and and by loving by loving your system anyway the way it is by accepting it like it is so just to be connected by love is enough that's beautiful to be connected by love and observing things that are holding you back and letting that go. Really quickly I got so much great advice from you but I wanted to hear about more of your business advice what is the worst business advice that you've ever gotten worst business advice yes I I I've made more than seven transitions in my life already and every time I wanted to transition because I always chose challenging paths I heard don't do that.

Anni: 25:04

It's not a good time for you to do this and if I heard if I have heard them I wouldn't have done any of the transitions I've made even this one the last one which was the most disruptive one was like I was a top leader I was working in a multinational company I had bonuses I had car I had a car I had insurance health insurance I had you know more than 13 uh monthly you know salaries and I decided to be a healer and a coach so everybody like wow what are you doing are you crazy no I'm not crazy I I trust myself I trust that if I do that with purpose and and I work you know with energy and with the right energy burning out it's not that it's just um putting your energy in the right place wow there you go everyone putting your energy in the right place and not listening to other people's fears because they're not yours they're theirs and they're just projecting their fears and so be brave and put your energy in the right place.

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 26:25

So I want to wrap it up and I want to let our audience find you how can they find you and connect with you um on Instagram Flavia Goldenberg I am on LinkedIn Flavia Goldenberg I have my website which is flaviagoldenberg.com Wow it's it's not difficult to find me just googly.

Anni: 26:47

I really appreciate you coming onto Career Coaching Secrets and sharing your deep deep insight on who you are how you came to be how expansive your lust for knowledge is thank you so much for coming onto our podcast today.

Flavia Goldenberg MBA PCC: 27:04

Thank you Annie thank you so much I appreciate you and I hope that I at least got a spark and an insight in each one of our you know the people who's going to to listen and and you as well I know you definitely made an impact on me when you gave that ancestral comment I felt ooh chills she knows me already this is hitting deep I'm so glad that we got to talk about that.

Anni: 27:35

Thank you so much for coming onto our podcast today.

Davis Nguyen : 27:38

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months or even $100,000 weeks all without burning out and making sure that you're making an impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you visit join purplecircle dot coming out