Meet Andy Petranek: Professional Life, Leadership & Relationship Coach

We had the good fortune of connecting with Andy Petranek and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Andy, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I was drawn to it, very early on. After 4 years as an officer in the USMC and then 4 years as a sales rep for a Fortune 500 company, I was tired of jobs that required me to conform to other people’s ways of being and thinking. I was ready to decide for myself how to operate in my life. And while I could do that, sort of, within the confines and structure of a big company, I’ve always been an “all in” person. For me, alignment is everything. That meant being the same person in my job as outside of my job. And as I was discovering in my work in corporate America, for me that was next to impossible.

I remember one story from that time period. I had sold the biggest account in the company that year, and as a result, had become very close with the engineering team that was to implement the changeover to our company’s products. I was also training for this brand new sport of “adventure racing” on the weekends. The sport (Eco Challenge) required you and your team to navigate your way through a 4-500 mile course on foot, horseback, canoe, kayak, bike, while navigating, trekking, climbing, rappelling, mountaineering, etc. all while sleeping as little as possible en route to the finish line.

Well, I had come into the corporate facility one day driving my company car (a Dodge Intrepid), and it had a bike and kayak on the roof, plus all my trekking and climbing gear for a weekend trip out to the desert. One of the guys made a comment, “Andy, what are you doing? During the week, you’re this mild-mannered, engineering corporate guy, while on the weekends your this crazy adventure nut.” Isn’t that tough – to navigate both worlds like that?” I remember giving him some answer in the moment just to get him to stop asking questions like that, but that question really stuck with me, and was a big factor in me completely changing my life so that my work life and weekend life would be in more alignment, and I could create my own rules, schedule and boundaries.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
The journey to my life coaching career got started right out of college – I was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. While that to most, may not sound like a job as a coach (I didn’t think it was either), I can clearly see now that the things I learned to focus on and develop in my platoon, my ethos as a platoon leader, are also the things I work closely on with my coaching clients today. These are things like fitness, knowledge, connection, skill, teamwork, communication, discipline, confidence, and leadership. A unit that doesn’t operate with a high level of proficiency in all these areas, struggles in its ability to perform well under the pressures of combat. So that became my focus with myself, and my Marines, and unbeknownst to me at the time, also became my entry point into the world of one-on-one and small group coaching, though it took me until many years to figure that out.

Cut to 2004. I had been out of the Marines for 12 years, and had just finished an 8-year stint as a Red Bull sponsored elite-level adventure racing athlete, during which time I had also become a massage therapist, nutrition coach, and fitness trainer. I had a small personal training practice, and one day while surfing the internet, I stumbled across CrossFit. Willing to give it a try myself, I became immediately and thoroughly convinced of its effectiveness, and opened one of the first 10 affiliate gyms in the world, Crossfit Los Angeles. It was here that I continued to draw upon the leadership, communication, and team-building skills that I learned in the Marine Corps.

Over the course of 11 years, I grew the gym into a thriving community of over 350 people, while also developing a staff of full-time coaches and part-time trainers. Because this type of small gym had never existed before, I also worked hard to create a business system to support it. This eventually spun off into a consulting firm that helped hundreds of other CrossFit affiliate gyms thrive. I became known in the community and world in those early years because of feature articles in Men’s Journal, Muscle & Fitness, and the Los Angeles Times.

Another business that I created during that time was a health and wellness event we called the Whole Life Challenge (wholelifechallenge.com). It was a 6-week, online game that you played with your friends, family members, and coworkers that challenged you to develop daily habits in 7 areas of your life: nutrition, exercise, mobility, sleep, hydration, wellbeing, and reflection. It was a global success, which at its peak, had hundreds of teams and over 28,000 players participating all over the world.

Up until this point, my growth as a health and fitness coach, business owner, leader, and influencer in the world of CrossFit and health and well-being had been on a very steady upward trajectory. Then in early 2019, the Whole Life Challenge hiccuped. Enrollment dropped by over 40%, I took it emotionally and very personally. Having never experienced a downturn like that before, I made a bunch of emotional knee-jerk decisions that upset long-time customers, and lost the faith of my team. We lost employees. For the first time in over 50 years of life, I began to experience panic attacks and full-on bouts of anxiety. As others might say, I started to experience the fullness of life… or at least a version of it that I’d escaped up until then.

It took me almost a year to recover, and during that time I developed a very personal connection to and empathy for the normal life struggles and plights of others. I had studied anxiety, depression, and extreme self-judgment extensively while earning a master’s degree in spiritual psychology from the University of Santa Monica in 2013, but I had never dealt with it myself. This was different. In coming back to the WLC, I found that I no longer wanted to limit my conversations to just health, fitness, and wellbeing. I wanted to deal with the complexities and challenges of all of life… relationships, career, grief, tragedies, and even death.

I slowly started to take on one-on-one life coaching clients and found that with my diverse background, experience, and desire to serve others that I had a ‘natural’ ability for it. Perhaps this was from my experience as a fitness coach, spiritual psychology degree, or recent personal experience, but it’s also possible it was because I’d been the recipient of over 20 years of one-on-one coaching myself. I hired my first coach in 1995, worked with her for over 12 years, and have had multiple other life and business coaches since. That journey has been one of the most important of my life, opening my heart, helping me create peace, acceptance, love, kindness, and joy that is still to this day revealing deeper layers more places to grow.

Today, I work full-time as a one-on-one life, leadership, and relationship coach. I help people become the person they’ve always wanted to be by taking steps to reveal to the world more of who they truly are. This invariably leads to improved self-confidence, a deeper level of freedom and resilience in all the relationships in their life, and an improvement in their career and earning potential. It helps them better understand who they are, and answer the question of where they are going, and why. I don’t have an ideal client, rather, I work with anyone who’s committed to investing the time and energy toward their personal growth in order to ‘raise the tide’ in all aspects of their life, including the one that is causing them the most pain, stress, anxiety, worry, and doubt.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Santa Monica Mountains / Malibu – I would take them to the epic hikes and mountain bike rides that are such a big part of my life. Venice Beach / the strand. I’d take them to the beach, perhaps surfing, walks along the strand, have coffee or lunch at Perry’s.
Nichols Canyon Beach – It doesn’t get any more beautiful than this!
Museums – I take them to the Peterson Automotive Museum, and the Broad.
I’d take them to the only Russian Bath House / Spa that I know of in Los Angeles, City Spa.
For my favorite lunch, I’d take them to C&M Cafe on Overland in Palms, and for my favorite poke, to the Poke Bar at Washington and Centinela.
For dinner, would take them to Birdie G’s, Uzumaki, Hatchet Hall, and Ginger’s Divine Ice Cream for dessert.
If we had time, I’d want to take them out to the Palm Springs area just to get away, and perhaps head out to hike and stargaze in Joshua Tree.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
One of the most impactful parts of my journey over the past 20 years came as a result of my pursuit of a master’s degree in spiritual psychology from the University of Santa Monica. While the program taught me the techniques and skills associated needed to be “fluent” in spiritual psychology, the curriculum was really my own life. I spent the better part of two years exploring deeply the ins and outs of my life, my family, upbringing, beliefs, and inner sense of well-being. It’s because of that school and the community of people that I went through the program with that I’m able to serve people as a coach the way I can today.

Website: andypetranek.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andypetranek/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andypetranek/

Facebook: facebook.com/andypetranek

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfbzGqpSndgU2m-PInJnt7A