At BrilliantRead Media, our aim is to bring to our community some of the finest stories from the startup ecosystem. As part of this endeavour, we invited a passionate entrepreneur – Tina Bhanot for an exclusive interview with us. She is an Entrepreneur, Leader, Coach, Trainer, Speaker, Influencer, Change Enabler, and Mentor. Tina is the Founder and Director at atfirstpage. Let’s learn more about her exciting journey, her background and her advice for our growing community.
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Tina:
We are aware of your contribution to the ecosystem, talk us through your background and your journey, please;
My Dad was in a transferable job so I had to move to different places but I did my main schooling from KV Srinagar (J&K) and further pursued BSc in Natural Science from the Institute of Science, Nagpur.
Since my family was conservative and a little orthodox so I got married early like my other sisters but before that handled the responsibility of a Director of the Institute of Vocational Training for women at Nagpur and always had a dream of achieving and doing something on my own.
To add to my skills and knowledge, I also attended many Entrepreneur Development programs run by the Small Industries Service Institute which is now MSME (Govt of India). Also, completed my B.Ed. and Masters’s in English and started teaching as that was the best option for an Army Wife.
While teaching I got lots of opportunities like to be an academic coordinator to Principalship of a school in India and Bhutan.
After 21 years of teaching experience, I started training Teachers across India in –
> Teaching gadgets making
> Curriculum Designing
> Lesson Plan Designing
> CCE (Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation system)
> Personality Development modules
> Classroom Management
> Effective teaching styles
What made you passionate about ‘Coaching’?
Helping others heal is truly my passion. My goal is to guide my clients to find happiness and live their life to the fullest.”
For me, coaching and guiding came naturally as whenever I visited schools for teachers training, Teachers use to ask me if I could guide their students as well and that was the time, I thought of taking Coaching seriously and did my foundation, Advanced, Master’s and Overseas certified Career Coaching courses and became a qualified counsellor.
I also, did my NLP certification to help my clients better.
‘atfirstpage.com’ is such a unique name; talk us through more about it, please. Our audience would also love to know what kind of problem you are solving?
So atfirstpage is not only a unique name but the whole concept is unique. After completing our counselling courses three of us Dr Anuradha, Ms Aparna and Tina (me) thought of starting our own venture.
So AT, is the initials of our names and the first page is the beginning of something you start as a fresh page or from a clean slate you are guided and counselled to set your own goals. That is how Edu services Pvt Ltd has evolved and is going strong.
Atfirstpage is a career enablement platform, where we not only guide students to choose the right career but also focus on their holistic development, we also run modules on –
– Personality Development
– Effective study Habits
– Emotional awareness
– 21st century skills
– Cognizance webinar series ( new age career domains)
How do you manage to keep going despite the challenges? What drives you?
Empowering and challenging the myths, stereotypes about wellness journey to have self-awareness and courage to do their own therapy to live a life of respect, dignity and treat others with the same ethical principles is my drive to work in this field.
Where there’s a will there’s a way. Having said that, each student we counsel gives us more energy, new direction and motivation to do even better in future and I feel for coaches learning never stops. Each case teaches you something new to explore and learn more and experiment further.”
Who do you believe has been the biggest source of motivation in your daily life?
For me, it’s my husband who always encouraged me to do whatever I wanted to, his support and encouragement always motivated me to keep going, other than him of course my friends who showed so much belief and trust in me.
My client’s positive feedback and above all now my children who give me a lot of strength to keep moving ahead.
What are some of the strategies that you believe have helped you grow as a person?
There are a few:
(1) Being mindful
(2) Always being resourceful
(3) Taking extreme ownership and responsibility for my actions Courage
(4) Ability to take risks & venture into uncharted territories.
(5) Be true to yourself
(6) Feel the pulse of people
(7) Give your best every time
(8) Networking
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Please share with us, how do you motivate your clients?
I think I have the power of convincing and motivating not only my clients but other people around me as well.
So at atfirstpage we have a beautiful module on personality development that covers all the aspects of having a balanced personality. We have a lot of interesting videos, activities and small tests for our clients to know themselves better and to get motivated by listening to some real-life stories and incidents.
We too have dedicated psychologists as part of these modules in case our students need any special help.
What are the business mantras you have embraced as you sought to establish your success story?
For me personally, it is ‘grab the opportunities that come your way and keep on learning and growing, also try to be different in your approach”
You are always positive and motivated, what keeps you going?
That’s quite true that I am always motivated and positive in my actions.
I think that comes from loving yourself and I do that, I love myself, looking after my health, pampering myself.”
For me, gymming and yoga is a must because there I challenge myself by timing my exercise regime and difficulty levels, so that motivates me to do even better every time.
Any little challenge in your life motivates you to keep doing better and keep on going. Also, the appreciation, incentives, appraisals energize and motivate me.
What about your journey makes it satisfying/exciting?
Getting great feedbacks from those who have been inspired through my social media content, through my coaching sessions/programs amps up my energy to deliver more value to them. Seeing shifts in them and in their journey makes it satisfying because I see their success as my success and their breakthroughs as mine.
I have been part of many discussions online as a guest speaker for many schools and also a few corporate trainings so yes all that keeps me energized and happy towards my journey so far.
In your opinion, what are the keys to success?
I will say it straight that there are many factors but if you really have to have the key elements then to me these are the ones:
~ Accepting & loving myself.
~ Responsibility for my actions
~ Standing up for myself
~ Resourcefulness
~ Curiosity
~ Positive Attitude
~ Taking massive action (execution) with consistency and belief
~ Keep on learning
~ Be approachable
What advice would you give students and young professionals who want to have a successful career?
First of all, every individual should pursue his or her passion and line of interest so my advice to my clients and students is always follow a profession in which you have an interest and aptitude for the same.
Know your true potential, your strengths, weaknesses and abilities that can help you to succeed. Time management is very important as well.
So my advice to my clients is to have a very clear picture of their career goals and try to do the following:
(a) Reverse goal setting
(b) Time Management
(c) Prioritize your work
(d) No Procrastination
(e) Remain motivated
(f) Be resilient
