Sandhya Reddy is the founder and principal coach at Chapter Two, a coaching consultancy that enables everyone from CEOs to work-from-home parents to achieve their goals by replacing self-imposed limitations with enabling stories. She is a well experienced Leadership and Transformation Coach based in Bangalore, India.
Sandhya has a successful track record of over 16 years in leading the marketing function in different industries: FMCG, Entertainment, Telecommunications and Information Technology. The brands she has helped build include RPG Music, Sify, CavinKare, NetApp India and Informatica Business Solutions. She has been a key member of Global Marketing teams and has experience leading strategic global initiatives. Sandhya’s best work has been in fostering a culture of sustained, differentiated performance.
She is a great listener, an astute psychology student, and a strong thinker. She has used these strengths amply to build a strong portfolio of coaching assignments over the past two years.
Sandhya is a certified coach with over 500 hours of coaching experience. Her venture, Chapter Two, is driven by an original coaching framework that uses the power of stories or deep-rooted beliefs to discover issues, create change, and inspire leadership in all walks of life.
Sandhya volunteers as a coach with the Cheri Blair Foundation that empowers women entrepreneurs to be economically independent and successful.
In an interview, She shared her motivational story with our team.
Q.Please tell us about your startup, How did you think about “ChapterTwo”?
A: As a student, I realized that I thought differently from the rest. My ideas on a given subject were radically different from those of my peers. I discovered I was able to take a non-judgmental view on many things. I knew this was a trait that would come in handy someday.
Then time flew and soon, my only goal as a student was to land a good job as soon as possible so that I could be financially independent. I also wanted money to travel. I love traveling. I wanted to buy a camera and explore the world. So getting a job with a good salary was my passport to a lot of things I wanted to do.
Like all young people, I began my career with a lot of ambition. I dreamed of one day becoming the CMO of a large organization with a big marketing budget. With this aim in mind, I started my journey as a product executive. I thought that as the years went by, one day I would mature into a CMO.
I enjoyed work, I was learning a lot, I loved the challenges, I loved working with teams, and I loved the travel and adventure that came with the work. But things changed. As I learnt more about myself and the world, I woke up one morning and discovered I was trapped in a rat race I didn’t really enjoy and couldn’t sustain. The long hours of work and the constant deadlines and targets without an overarching vision started to drain my soul. I realized I was not happy. I wasn’t getting quality time with my family either. So, in the process of growing as a marketing professional, I was becoming a corporate slave. 13 years had passed this way.
My radically different brain began to work overtime. I wanted to do something more meaningful. After thinking a lot about what I could do, I decided to become a Life Coach.
It wasn’t an easy climb. I had to do a lot of things to take care of before I quit my day job. I had to save some money. It took 3 years for me to close loans and create a fund that would sustain the pursuit of my dream.
Q. Introduce your Co-Founder/Founders and Team.
“I am the only founder of Chapter Two.”
Q. Explain more about Chapter Two, What makes it special and how is it different from other similar startups ?
Coaching involves enabling someone to achieve a goal by helping them draw from their own hidden reserves. Coaching is different from training, counseling or managing. Training involves learning new skills. Counseling is helping someone cope with pain. Managing is reminding people what to do. But coaching goes beyond that. A good coach listens, clarifies the problem, asks the right questions and inspires a client to discover a solution – all aligned to his or her goals.
Chapter Two coaching is based on an original model that is nuanced, real and credible. The model uses the power and process of inner storytelling to identify counterproductive beliefs, emotions and language. It then rebuilds them to serve our true purpose and goals. The crux of the model is the very human activity of telling stories in order to survive.
What is a story? Just like the brain processes sensory data to help us keep our physical balance, the mind processes life data into a story that helps us keep our psychological balance. We are constantly creating stories in our head to make sense of the world, our experience, and to anchor us in life.
At Chapter Two, we use this innate faculty of the mind to replace self-imposed limitations with enabling stories.
Q. What challenges did you face during this startup and How did you overcome?
The biggest question in my mind was this: is the Indian market ready for coaching?
Coaching may be a very developed industry in Americas and Europe, but in India it is still a nascent sphere. Most coaching professionals are ex-HR folk who try their hand at coaching and mentoring as part of their day jobs. In this climate, becoming a full time independent coach seemed like a risk. Will I get clients? Will I successful? These questions occupied me for a while.
But I believe in our philosophy: ‘We become the stories we tell ourselves. That is why it is important to tell ourselves the right stories’. This is a simple but powerful truth that applies to everyone in the world, me included. It is what drives me as a coach. I trust the coaching process. I want people to achieve their potential. I want to enable personal transformation and help people live a life of their choice. I believe when faced with a good coaching product, people will respond and find the strength to change. I believe in my own capabilities. It is possible to transform ourselves into a more robust ‘version 2.0.’ That’s what inspired me to start Chapter Two.
Q. What’s the current path and future plan?
Currently Chapter Two provides 1:1 coaching to individuals.
We have just introduced open workshops and workshops for corporates on getting unstuck and delivering peak performance, personal effectiveness, leadership effectiveness and developing leadership gravitas.
Read Also : Malini Agarwal Teaches to Grab Success and Recognition Together
Chapter Two Coaching video :
Thank you Sandhya for sharing your such a motivational story with us, We wish you all the very best for your venture and future.
ChapterTwo website – www.chaptertwocoaching.com
Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/ChapterTwoCoaching/