Read our inspiring interview with Lenka Lutonska, International Business Coach & Author of Energetic Selling and Marketing.
Tell Us A Little About Your Background First
I grew up in Slovakia but moved to the UK at the age of 19 to become independent and start a new life.
My strict Slovakian father had had other plans for me. He wanted me to secure a job in banking and stay at home and this just wasn’t the path that I wanted to take. I wanted to be free and I desperately yearned to follow my calling to work with people in a meaningful way.
When I settled in London, I became a team member at McDonalds and worked my way up, from cleaning tables to becoming a branch manager. I was successful in my own right, but my heart wanted something else. I was fascinated by the workings of the mind and wanted to know everything that I would need in order to create powerful transformations for myself and others. As such, I studied psychotherapy, counselling, hypnotherapy and eventually I discovered NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) which changed my life forever.
What Happened After That?
In 2006, once I had finished my NLP training to the highest level and became a Certified Trainer and Master Coach, I decided to go it alone. I sold my house, car and other belongings; moved in with my boyfriend (now my husband); and I started my business from his kitchen table.
While the first few years were challenging, I eventually became one of the leading NLP trainers in the UK, delivering workshops and training on communication skills and confidence building to hundreds of people across the UK, including Cambridge University academics and Fortune 500 company executives.
In 2014 however, I lost my first business in its entirety in a matter of months due to an unhealthy business partnership that went sour.
Did That Impact Your Confidence?
This left a big mark on my confidence and what followed were several years of hardship whilst I desperately tried to rebuild my business, to no avail. It was an extremely hard period of my life but exactly what I needed to experience in order to give birth to a business that is fully aligned with me and enables me to serve at my highest level.
Today, I am an international business and mindset coach for women coaches and change-makers. I thrive on helping other women to build successful businesses, many of which have scaled their impact to six or seven figures. I have clients in over 30 countries and have worked with thousands of women across the world.
How Did You Decide That You Wanted To Be An NLP Practitioner And Career Coach?
I always had a deep desire to do something remarkable in the world. I had been looking, all my life to find my own happiness and find a career that would allow me to do what I’ve always loved most: helping people.
I spent years exploring how I could do this. I moved to a new country, studied counselling, hypnotherapy, psychotherapy and more. When I came across NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), I was instantly hooked and knew that I wanted to make a career of it. I sold everything I had to pay for the training and graduated with a perfect score! I am now the only ABNLP accredited NLP Trainer in the UK with 100% certification!
Becoming an accredited NLP Practitioner gave me all I’d ever hoped for: I found a way to fully love and accept myself, my body and my life; I opened my heart to love and I attracted my husband into my life; and I started a successful training and coaching business changing the lives of hundreds of people.
Tell Us About Your Book
In 2019, I released my first book, ‘Energetic Selling and Marketing’. The book is for entrepreneurs who want to open their minds to the possibility of extraordinary business growth and experience lasting and aligned business success.
It explores how to use internal energy to drive business growth through five key elements – thoughts, emotions, awareness, values and actions.
When energy and spirituality are integrated, not only are mindset and communication techniques improved but sales and marketing strategies become transformed, resulting in exponential growth.
I wrote this book because when I started to pay more attention to the spiritual nature of my business, and trusting my intuition, remarkable things unfolded. By focusing energetically on five critical areas of my business, I began to experience rapid growth. And so my principles of Energetic Selling and Marketing were born.
What Have Been The Challenges?
The feeling of ‘not good enough’ has been a big challenge for me. Before I discovered NLP, I battled constantly with feelings of inferiority and self-doubt which held me back in life and stopped me from reaching my potential. Once I fully understood how the techniques work, I began to apply them to my own life alleviating my own negative feelings and self limiting beliefs in the process.
NLP helped me to develop new habits and perspectives, change unconscious patterns of behaviour and let go of the insecurities which were holding me back.
What Are Your Tips For Building Your Own Business?
Here are ,my tips:
Surround yourself with like-minded people
I created the Facebook group ‘Freaking Amazing Women’ in 2015 for women coaches, visionaries and change-makers who want to make an impact on the world. The group allows me to connect with a community who are just like me. It is full of inspirational people who want to grow their mindsets, expand their entrepreneurial skills and celebrate their successes.
Get to know how your mind works – and don’t let it hold you back
Our mind can be our best friend but also our worst enemy. It can throw tantrums and try to hold us back when we are taking the essential steps to grow as entrepreneurs. Our brain is not designed to allow us to make changes easily and, as such, it is easy to find ourselves in a constant battle with our mind which wants to keep us safe. Sometimes we need to screw what that small part of our mind thinks and simply, “do it anyway”.
Believe that anything is possible
Creating a successful business means taking many courageous steps outside of our comfort zone. It takes lots of risk.
I always remind myself that the genuine desire and calling towards something bigger is all the evidence I need that it must work, even if it gets messy in the middle sometimes.
One of my favourite mantras is, “Anything is possible. Anything is possible now. Anything is possible for me!”
How Do You Build Your Own Confidence?
I believe that confidence is not something we have or don’t have, but rather something we use or don’t use.
As such, the fastest way to build our confidence is to take actions which stretch our confidence muscles.
Yes, mindset work IS important but only to the point when we are able to take those important actions. Sometimes it means doing it with butterflies in our belly but that is the exact moment when we are growing as a person and when our confidence muscle is being built. It’s the moment of true growth and change.
So – follow your butterflies!
How Do You Balance Work And Life?
When my third son was born, my husband and I jointly decided that the best thing we could do for our family was for him to resign from his day job and become a ‘stay at home dad’. It was a very risky decision to make at the time but we were lucky to find that it paid off very quickly. I am so grateful that my income more than compensates for my husband’s salary as this has allowed us both to spend more time with our children.
Husband aside, I have managed to build a small but incredibly supportive and loving team of women who support my business and help me achieve my goals. Without them, I’d be working crazy hours. Outsourcing some of my work means I have time to stay focused; do things in my business that really matter; spend plenty of time with my family; and look after my well-being,
