From Real Estate and Entrepreneurship to Coaching: Meet Graciela Moore, the Empath and Abuse Recovery Coach

In our Case Study series, we're diving into the personal journeys, the real-life ups and downs, and the unique paths of Lumia graduates. Discover how real coaches found their way to coaching, built their businesses, and get clients!

Every interview is a window into the life of someone who has embraced coaching as a way to not only change their own lives, but also to impact others. These conversations are about connection, growth, and the diverse ways each coach brings their authentic self to this meaningful and important work. 

From Real Estate and Entrepreneurship to Coaching: Meet Graciela Moore, the Empath and Abuse Recovery Coach

Today’s interview is with Graciela Moore – a Lumia graduate, coach, poet and author celebrated for her multiple publications, who brings over a decade of expertise in social media, marketing, branding, and sales to her creative endeavors.

As a distinguished podcast guest and the charismatic host of LIVE shows and book clubs, she has earned recognition as one of the Top 50 Social Audio Voices of 2022 by theglobalinterview.com.

Leading weekly LIVE discussions, Graciela engages hundreds in conversations on topics such as Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) – Empath Leadership and Content Creation, showcasing her profound influence in the digital space. You can connect with her here.

Please introduce yourself and describe your niche as a life coach.

My name is Graciela Moore, I am a Puerto Rican residing in Florida, and I am an entrepreneur. As a coach, I help highly sensitive empaths and victims of domestic abuse.

What’s your professional background?

I've always been in sales and marketing in some form or another. All through high school and college, I would write people's essays and get paid for it. I had a hustler mentality. I was an Avon lady at 19 – the idea of this is my business, this is my merchandise, these are my clients, it's just always been there. That led me to real estate, and there's a lot of coaching when you're dealing with a buyer.

With the pandemic, I got furloughed. And once I was given a chance to come back, I decided not to, and I just decided it would be a new era in my life. I've always been very interested in understanding myself and people, through therapy and growing up misunderstood. In that space, I found that getting certified as a coach was an option! 

I’m a licensed real estate professional, and with that, there are ethics standards, and there's the Realtor National Association. I looked for a coach training program that valued ethics. 

Once I found Lumia, in a week, I went from not having real estate, and not knowing what to do with my life to suddenly being enrolled to become a coach. 

Lumia is the best coaching program out there. Now ask me how many times a week I say that! I say it all the time.

I discovered through the program that I was ambitious! It forced me to look back at my life in a way that therapy still hadn't gotten me to. It was very eye-opening.

It transformed my self-talk, which therapy still hadn't been able to achieve because I realized how much I had accomplished. I had never looked back at life with a positive psychology lens before.

How did you launch your business as a coach? 

I launched the week I graduated! I built my website myself. It was one learning curve after the other. It's funny because it is true that you quit the nine-to-five and now you work 24-7 and it's so true.

Now I'm selling myself, I'm selling my own intellectual time to you so that we can help you figure out your life. It's a numbers game, just as in real estate, you're gonna go through a hundred conversations to land the one client. I'm so grateful that my background already prepared me for that.

Entrepreneurship is very hands-on and a lot of work and very tiring, you do work 24-7. When I'm not working, I'm thinking of content. When I'm not with a client, I'm thinking “Who else do I need to check in with?” 

Everything I do – podcasts, books, social media – is related to me. I speak a lot about coaching in my podcast, for example. My podcast is everywhere and it could be advertised and I get clients from my podcast. I wrote a book that is out there and people review it, people buy it, people read it. They know that I'm a coach and they come to me for coaching. 

Have you seen an increase in your income or client base since completing Lumia?

Oh, definitely. But the increase is in all of the things that have sprouted out of me becoming a coach. Me figuring out my life, figuring out what I'm really about — and then turning it into a niche. I wrote a book – that’s income. I wrote another book and there's that income. And now I'm reaching for advertising. And it's a question of how big can you make your snowball go. But if you don't keep rolling it, it's not going to grow! This is why it's exhausting.

I've also been very transparent about the fact that I have my husband's income that can supplement me if I don't show up with my part. Other people don't have that, it is different for everybody. I'm just creative and always on the lookout for what else can I bring to my community to grow my business.

How has your coaching business changed over time?

My first experience as a certified coach was group coaching. And I had a five-week packaged coaching program called the Hope Series and a group of 25 people. And this was at the TaT Lab, thanks to John Kim. I transitioned into group coaching right after that because I started working with a non-profit with group coaching for victims of domestic violence. I realized I wanted to focus and coach one-on-one. 

How have you grown your business?

Professionally speaking, social media has been great because with the premise of not being afraid to be in people's faces. I have clients in Vietnam and clients in London and if it weren't for the internet, I wouldn't have met them. I have zero clients that I see face to face. All of my clients I see on Zoom. 

I could give you a whole blueprint and you may still do it as so and still find that the success you got is different from what you wanted. The biggest advice I would give anyone is to not be afraid to be in people's faces. It can be uncomfortable! Even I, after 12 or 13 years, still feel cringy to post so much. 

Think about your realtor. Do you have a magnet of your realtor with their face on it? It's very common. It's a cultural thing. With the premise of not being afraid of being in people's faces, once you launch your business, figure out your niche and you're ready to go, figure out a way to put that message out there. What is your mission? What do you stand for? What do you advocate for? And then just start putting it out there. 

Find your favorite podcasts.  Do you know what I did? I would go to the bottom of each one of the life coaching podcasts or the psychology podcasts I would find, contact the podcast, and email them – “Hi, my name is Graciela Moore, and I'm a certified coach and this is what I do. I just want to know if your audience would benefit from hearing this.” In my first year, I had 17 podcast interviews. And I landed all of those because I took the trouble of reaching out to people to tell them who I was. 

Do not be afraid to put yourself in front of people. And it takes practice and it takes time and I would say if you need to invest in someone to coach you and your talking skills or public speaking skills, go ahead and do it. 

What aspects of the Lumia coaching training program do you find most valuable?

It was the academics that hooked me. I felt confident every single time we transitioned to a new teacher or professor. I felt confident that my money was well spent. 

How would you describe the quality of the instructors and curriculum?

Every single one of them was just so great in their own right. Even the topics that I felt uncomfortable with, I knew at that point that I was uncomfortable for a reason, that it was about me and that it shed light on something I needed to work through. 

If you do the homework at the same time that you're taking the course and get feedback from the professionals, it can make all the difference. Digging into the homework about my life gave me a lot of confidence. It opened up the world to how much better my life could be.

What sets Lumia apart from other coach training programs you may have considered? 

Making all of those connections was priceless. The encouragement of the community. When we graduated, it was such a group. We all kept in touch. Everybody was talking to each other.

You have a community to fall back on. The online group is great as well. All of the resources in the library, it's a well-rounded certification. The people in it just make it that much better. Oh, and the diversity too! My group was so diverse. It was impressive to see people who were in my class on the other side of the world tuning in at 4 a.m. in the morning because they didn't want to miss it. That speaks volumes in my opinion.

How has coach training with Lumia impacted your life?

It has impacted my life in every way. I'm grateful for my clients because they keep me accountable and they keep me honest. How can I preach if I don't practice? It’s the type of industry for me that allows me to,  if I'm telling my client to speak up in their relationship, I need to speak up in mine. To go from the person that would just swallow things and bottle things up to now say things like, that's not okay. 

I didn't even know what the word advocacy was until I became a life coach. I went from several very toxic, abusive relationships to then being in a serious relationship that I hope is forever and got married and now we have a family and it's, what can I do differently now for myself, to advocate for myself? 

What was the biggest support you needed in coaching and how did Lumia support that?

I would say that one because learning to speak up about the little things is what helped me speak up about my past and growing up highly sensitive and being misunderstood because of that and reaching out to people who have gone through the same. 

Would you recommend Lumia to others

I could speak about these things all day and how just great and positive they've been. And I'm also very honest about the sleepless nights and the cries and me flipping tables over websites. I've been very transparent about all of it.  

Lumia helped me discover my true potential. Lumia takes the cake, it really does. Lumia is the greatest investment I've made. Think about it. You're investing in yourself. It's power, anywhere you go.

Thinking of Becoming a Coach?

A lot of talented people like you dream of having a coaching business, but aren’t quite sure how to get there. We train and certify adventurous coaches, making sure you’ve got all you need to build a business you love and transform lives, on your terms. If you're ready to learn more, come check out Lumia Life Coach Training!

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