Today we’d like to introduce you to April Diaz.
Hi April, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I never imagined starting a company focused on empowering women. Most of what I saw for women was overly feminine and focused on the home and family, not becoming a badass female leader. In the first chapter of my career, I was a minority leader in my age, gender, and/or race. I constantly felt othered and like I had to work twice as hard for half of the influence.
Then I became a contractor for other companies, both coaching and speaking nationally and those same challenges existed. While I grew my audience and strengthened my coaching skills, I became frustrated by vision and values misalignment while working for other companies. I kept hearing how women were exhausted, burned out, unseen, passed over, not recognized for their contributions, and stretched unbearably thin. After I got unjustly fired from my primary contract, I clearly heard God say, “For 20 years, you’ve built other men’s visions. It’s time for you to build the vision I’ve given to you.”
My entire career, I’ve developed leaders, invested in marginalized groups, and built diverse teams. Professionally, I wanted to start Ezer + Co. because in nearly all the leadership teams and speaking stages I’ve been on, I’ve been a minority voice. After two decades of not seeing this reality shift naturally and seeing the damaging impact on women, I knew this was the justice area I wanted to give my full leadership effort and company’s focus. In everything we do, we want to smash the patriarchy and rebuild a more mutual, equitable, and just world for women and men.
Personally, beyond my own lived experience as a lone female leader, I also have a teenage black daughter. As she grows up, I’m painfully aware of the systemic barriers and challenges she will face as a strong, powerful black woman. I want Ezer + Co. to break down walls and barriers so it’s even a little easier for her to pursue her dreams and goals.
Ezer + Co. was born out of the pain of my past and my vision for our future.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The only smooth road on this journey has been my confident belief that our work is absolutely needed in the world today.
Externally, we’ve experienced huge struggles. Our largest challenge was surviving a 2-year global pandemic that disproportionately impacted women. The world went into quarantine on Ezer + Co.’s first birthday, so it’s a bit of a miracle we survived. Most women during Covid were simply trying to survive; thriving wasn’t even in the realm of possibility. As the Founder and CEO, I also was diagnosed with long-Covid earlier this year, and it almost destroyed our business because I wasn’t able to work for nearly three months.
Internally, being an entrepreneur has been the most intense personal development work I’ve ever done! Working through limiting mindsets, doubts, fears, and perceived scarcity has challenged me on every level.
And yet, every challenge is worth it because our mission matters!
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Ezer + Co.?
Ezer + Co. is a coaching company for women who want to live and lead with wholeness. We help empower women become Warriors and lead fully in all spaces in partnership with men. We provide holistic, transformational coaching through 6 interconnected wholeness dimensions – physical, emotional, mental, relational, spiritual, and renewal.
Our two primary offerings are 6-month coaching groups and our membership community.
Our primary offer is a 6-month intimate group coaching experience for women who want to reclaim who they are and live the confident life they deserve. Our groups use our proprietary Wholeness Assessment to determine the optimal transformation opportunities.
*Warrior Woman Coaching Groups: Coached by our certified coaches for any woman who wants to achieve a goal that matters most to her.
*Executive Warrior Woman Coaching Group: Coached by our CEO exclusively for women who own their own businesses or are in senior leadership.
Historically, professional coaching has been reserved for white men in the C-suite and professional athletes. We’re here to disrupt that reality and make coaching accessible for all women. Coaching is the primary behavioral science that helps people get different results and fulfill their unique potential.
Research and studies are clear that when women get better, they deploy that benefit to their families, communities, and make the world better. They multiply the money and investment.
Our secondary offer is amembership community designed to help women continually pursue wholeness and their goals in a supportive space that provides an ongoing pathway to increase wholeness through monthly features and focus. It can be overwhelming to DIY your transformation journey, so we guide and focus our community every month in one wholeness dimension so she can keep getting results and become more of her whole self.
Additionally, Ezer + Co. also provides customized coaching and consulting for men and executive teams, leadership training, and speaking.
We are for every single woman who is done settling for her current limitations in life and leadership. We are a coaching company wildly committed to you becoming your whole self. Unlike stereotypical women’s gatherings, self-help gurus, or pretentious executive coaching groups built for men who all put you in a box and force-fit their solution on you, we guide you through a customized wholeness pathway, partner you with a certified coach and connect you with a passionate community of Warrior Women, so you can fulfill your God-given potential by leading as your whole self, everywhere you go.
While we are fully committed to smashing the patriarchy, the response to patriarchy isn’t matriarchy or even feminism. It’s a partnership. We’re committed to building systems, relationships, and environments that are mutually beneficial between men and women in every way.
We’re passionate about seeing women equally leading and contributing to every space, and our coaching holistically addresses this gap. We want to see women reclaim their leadership, voice, power, confidence, and their whole self – first for themselves because she’s worth it, but then at home and work. When we expand women’s wholeness internally, she get dramatic external results because she contribute, participates, and show up differently.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I agree with Queen Oprah that luck is when “preparation meets opportunity”. During the dark days of COVID-19, we prepared our proprietary Wholeness Assessment so we’d be ready to better help women identify their greatest growth opportunities. When our revenue disappeared at the beginning of the pandemic, we worked to create a flexible strategic plan to determine what kind of company we wanted to build.
We’ve been able to achieve the top 10% of annual revenue for women-owned businesses nationally, and that’s because we’ve used challenges to prepare us for the next level.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ezerandco.com
- Email: april@ezerandco.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ezerandco
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ezerandco
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/72274002/admin/feed/posts/
Image Credits
Shuree Danyell – 4K More
