Transforming Lives Through Coaching & Personal Growth – Exclusive Interview With Ana Nenadic

Ana Nenadic is a Certified Life Coach and the founder of THECOACHANA, an online coaching business. Her lifelong dream of starting a company came true after four years of burnout while working for other people. She has since dedicated her life to helping others overcome mental, physical, and emotional burnout by teaching them how to master their stress. She is the host of Thinking Out Loud podcast where she shares her expertise, insights, and tools on how to better understand the mind's strength and how to use it to excel in life.

Ana Nenadic, Life & Burnout Coach

Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.

My name is Ana Nenadic, I was born and raised in Vancouver, BC. My family is originally from Serbia and Croatia, so growing up, I was always immersed in different cultures. I have an older brother – but we’re only one year apart so I’ve always thought we were more like twins. Growing up here, I’ve always been close to nature, so I spend a lot of time in the outdoors. A few years ago I bought my dream truck, a 1994 Toyota Pickup with a 5-speed, and have started exploring the backroads of BC. I’ve always been fascinated with cars, whether driving them, working on them, or simply appreciating timeless vehicles that their owners have preserved. Now, I get to blend my love for nature and vehicles and enjoy them together.

What inspired you to establish THECOACHANA Coaching Services, and what specific goals or vision do you aim to achieve through your coaching services?

Ever since I was 15 years old, I knew I would run my own business. I didn’t know what my business would be, but I knew I would create a career I would never get tired of waking up for. My business, THECOACHANA, was inspired by something I saw in other people. Whenever I met someone new or grabbed coffee with an old friend, we would always get into conversations that hovered around the meaning of life and how our minds work. What I didn’t realize at the time was there was a pattern in how far the conversations could go. My curiosity led me to wonder if there was a way I could get better at having those conversations while also giving value to whoever I was talking to. This is where I found life coaching and enrolled in the Jay Shetty Certification School. Seven months later I graduated with my Life Coaching Certificate and registered my business then and there. My vision for the business is to be a resource for anyone who is questioning their place in life. Whether it’s with their career, relationships, values, their social lives – my business is a place for people to let out a deep breath, relax their shoulders, and figure out how we can get them back to feeling like themselves again.

Could you provide an overview of the coaching programs or services offered by THECOACHANA Coaching Services, and how they cater to the needs of your clients?

I offer 1-on-1 coaching sessions online. My most popular package is a bundle of six sessions where we focus on understanding the root cause of stress that is causing burnout. We figure out what signs of stress are showing up leading to their burnout, when the signs are the most intense, and then learn how to see the stress signals before they can turn into burnout. This bundle is highly effective at creating awareness for my clients so they can start to see their own lives from a new perspective, one that they find through our 1-on-1 sessions.

How do you personalize your coaching approach to meet the unique requirements and aspirations of individual clients?

Each of my clients gets a custom experience when they hire me for 1-on-1 coaching. My approach always begins with what has brought my client to our session. This is when I get to know the client and the details of their burnout. Once I get to know their situation, I work to understand what they are hoping to achieve by the end of our time together. In coaching, the coach and the client always create the path together. Throughout our sessions, I make sure to include check-in points so we can reflect on the progress we’ve made, make sure our initial goal is still the goal we want to work towards and adjust as needed.

Can you share any success stories or testimonials from clients who have benefited from THECOACHANA's coaching services?

One of my first clients, Afnan, came to me wanting to switch careers. She was exhausted from her current job and felt she was burning out multiple times each week. While she felt that her job as a Special Education Assistant (SEA) was extremely rewarding, her personal life was not where she wanted it to be. Her goal was to have a career that allowed her to travel while working. She had her eyes set on Software Development. We worked together for two sessions and were able to find where she was standing in her own way. This is where we had to shift her out of her burnout mindset and into motivation. She enjoyed learning, but when she’d sit at her desk, she would distract herself from studying. The time she’d set aside for learning how to write code would easily be swapped out for visiting with friends. Her habits simply weren’t aligned with her goals. By the end of the second session, she started seeing how she was prioritizing many things over working towards her dream career. That realization alone was enough to help her see that although she knew what her dream looked like, there wasn’t much else she was doing to make it a reality. She changed her focus to learning the skills she needed for her new career. Seven months after focusing on her habits and prioritizing her career, she made the shift to Software Development. I am proud to say that she is currently traveling the world while working as a software developer. She broke her weekly burnout cycle and created a personal and professional life that aligns with the life she wants to have.

Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.

One of the most pivotal moments in my life was the first time I got a concussion. I was 19 years old, working at Costco and I got a freezer door slammed on either side of my head. I saw a white light for 40 seconds, and once my vision came back, everything around me was spinning. It was a freak accident. I spent the next six months sitting in my room with the lights off, watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S. on repeat trying to remember how to do basic math. I lost a lot of my memories, my social skills, and, luckily, a lot of my bad habits.

I always say that my concussion knocked the crazy out of me but, it was an opportunity to rewire my brain. I started to look at my life through a completely different lens. I looked at the people around me, my job, my values, what kind of friend I was, and how I treated people around me. For the most part, I looked around and couldn’t piece many things together. I’d hit my head so hard that I couldn’t remember much of how I used to be so I had to start from scratch. I would look around at people I looked up to and respected and found ways to adopt whichever qualities I wanted for myself. I paid attention to which of my friends made me feel safe, respected, and appreciated and I spent more time with them. I got the chance to decide who I wanted to be, and I took it.

The lesson I learned from that time in my life is that I have a choice. I have a choice in who I am, who I am becoming, the way I treat people, the way I feel. I learned how to trust myself and make decisions that I believed in and this stands true for how I live my life today. I believe that if I didn’t go through it, my life today would be completely different.

Read more from Ana Nenadic