Andres Zylberberg

Leadership coach Andres Zylberberg works with CEOs to scale their businesses and helped grow one company from 40 people to 400 in two years. Now, it’s worth more than $2 billion.

“If you want to grow your business, you have to grow your people first,” Andres says.

“And the best way of growing people isn’t just training in specific skills, but to keep training emotional resources.”

The Life Coaching College graduate possesses an enviable clarity of his purpose in life, but it hasn’t always been this way. In fact, it took Andres, a former software developer-turned-business consultant, a couple of missteps to find his true path.

The first lesson came in the form of a failed venture: a social media platform that soared at first and then floundered under the constraints of sector-based regulations.

“It was such a tough time, we had to lay off staff and eventually we sold the company,” he says.

“These days, I have no trouble introducing myself as ‘the guy who screwed up’, it is now my superpower as I learned so much from it.”

The second lesson arrived not so much as an incident, but as a gnawing feeling that had stayed with him for much of his professional life. Andres has been working as a business consultant for many years, with clients scattered across Europe as well as in Australia, but he sensed there was more he could be doing for them.

“It was very hard to articulate, but it was this sense with clients that things were taking a long time to get to where we needed to be,” says Andres, who is based in Perth.

“There was a lack of structure in the conversation to help them create the ‘aha moment’.”

Andres thought the solution lay with doing more: more preparation, more reading more analysis.

“It got to the point where I would prepare for two days for a two-hour session,” he says.

In 2016, Andres attended a two-day workshop at The Life Coaching College in Perth and signed up within the first hour of the workshop.

“I felt I had found the piece I had been missing,” he says.

“I realised that my clients are very smart and they have all the answers, but it is the right questions that are missing.”

Andres signed up for the Diploma of Life Coaching course before moving onto the Master Practitioner of Coaching, immersing himself in the training for his own personal growth, while applying the techniques he was learning to his clients.

“I wanted to help give my clients the tools to help themselves; it wasn’t about giving them direction,” he says.

Andres is one of a growing cohort of business or executive coaches who study at The Life Coaching College to give them an edge in the consultancy world.

“I have met business coaches who don’t have that human coaching background and they struggle to understand certain behaviours and actions,” he says.

“Most people don’t like to talk about uncomfortable things, but I knew that if I could be comfortable talking about the uncomfortable thing that my clients don’t like to, then I can help create the ‘aha moments’.”

Andres was also attracted to the rigour and professionalism of the College’s approach. He is a ferocious reader — regularly consuming his psychologist wife’s textbooks — and appreciated that much of the College curriculum is underpinned by neuroscience.

“There is a lot of fluffy stuff around the term ‘coach’, and I wanted to get into the non-fluffy stuff,” he says.

“As the founder of the College, Glen (Murdoch) told me, the coaching tools and the frameworks are just a layer on the solid neuroscientific research so they don’t bore people to death.”

What’s more, Andres says, the College has a strong success rate, with many of the trainers running their own successful businesses.

“It wasn’t just lip service,” Andres says.

“The trainers were actually practising and making a living out of what they were training.”

By going through the course, and learning what he was teaching, Andres also grew as a person.

“I put everything into it, I was at my most vulnerable,” he says.

“It was probably the toughest thing that I’ve done in my life, but it was absolutely worth it.”

Most of all it gave him clarity about his drivers and how best to help others, as well as how to continue to grow his own business coaching.

These days, his business helps leaders reach their next stage of growth, based on the guiding fundamentals of people, strategy, execution and cash flow.

He plans to launch Mastermind groups in 2022 for leaders in the start-up phase who would benefit from a supportive community.

“I’m helping others go from good to great,” Andres says.

“I’m all about fulfilment, that is my ultimate drive.”