We recently had the chance to connect with Anais Babajanian and have shared our conversation below.
Anais, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What’s more important to you—intelligence, energy, or integrity?
Integrity is most important to me because its the value that everything else stems from. When you think and act from a place of honesty and adherence to principles, the energy you project is authentic and intentional. Additionally, integrity provides you with the parameters from which to lean in and explore opportunities and ideas that are aligned with your values. This is where true intelligence is born because its derived from an inherent desire to promote learning and growth.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I work with business owners and leaders who have hit a growth ceiling because they’re constantly stepping in to manage teams or fix mistakes. I help them get unstuck and move forward by cultivating effective delegation skills, streamlining processes, and implementing clear communication frameworks that create accountability.
Having been a business owner myself, I know firsthand how challenging it is to scale sustainably while ensuring things run smoothly on a day-to-day basis. I became a coach to teach other small business owners how to bridge the gap between themselves and their teams and escape the same cycle of isolation and overwhelm that I was caught in for five years.
Through coaching, I learned how to shift my perspective to expand my horizon of opportunities, and I want to show business owners how to do the same so they can become the version of themselves that their business needs to succeed.
I work with service-based small business owners and business leaders with teams of up to 150 employees. In addition to 1:1 coaching, I also offer group coaching as well as leadership training workshops for new managers. I work with clients virtually worldwide as well as locally in-person (within the greater Los Angeles area).
My ultimate goal is to give business owners the tools to stop working ‘in’ their business and start working ‘on’ it—transforming their company from merely surviving to truly thriving.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
I believed that my abilities were limited to serving as a support for others’ ideas and projects, but not in carving out and realizing a path of my own. My natural tendency was to stay in the background and quietly follow the instructions provided to me. While this served me well academically and even early in my career, I no longer subscribe to the idea that this is the ONLY way I can create value. I’ve taken my inherent skills and built a business where I get to teach others how to shift their perspectives, too. I’m grateful for the experience I had growing up, but I’m equally fortunate to have the opportunity to reassess this belief and ensure that it serves me now as an entrepreneur.
What fear has held you back the most in your life?
My fear of uncertainty has held me back the most, especially as a business owner. For most of my life, everything that I pursued had a clear blueprint – from primary school, to college, to the corporate world. I knew exactly what I was signing up for and what results I would get if I just followed the guidelines set out for me. Now, as an entrepreneur, this need for certainty paralyzes me, especially in my line of work, where there is no clear “return” on the investments you make in the form of time, energy, and resources to market yourself and gain clients. I’ve met this fear by sitting with the discomfort and understanding how this need for certainty actually serves me. The reality is – it doesn’t. It gives me the certainty of failure, which is the result of not taking action. The shift I’ve made is to focus on my efforts rather than the results I’m receiving. If my actions are aligned with the value I want to bring, then I will reap the benefits – I just have to trust the process and understand that success as a business owner is never linear.
Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What would your closest friends say really matters to you?
Honesty. At the end of the day, if someone doesn’t respect me enough to tell me the truth, then they are doing me and themselves a disservice. I firmly believe that avoiding confrontation for the sake of protecting someone’s feelings or pride makes you an accomplice in their downfall. It takes courage and integrity to share how you feel with someone, but its the only thing that actually drives positive change in people, both as individuals and in relationships.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I hope people share how I helped them see themselves and/or their situation differently. I hope they share questions that I asked them or observations that I shared that made them shift their assumptions and expand their realm of possibilities. I hope they share that I helped them let go of their pride and lean into the parts of themselves that they had been hiding out of fear of rejection or failure. Ultimately, I hope they tell others that I was a catalyst for positive change in their life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://anais.coach/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anaisbabajanian/#
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anais-babajanian-cpa/
Image Credits
Viby Creative
