Coaching Chronicles with Utkarsh

Tell us about your career journey till now? What did you do and where are you currently?

Sure. So every time I speak about my professional journey, wherever I am, in the moment, I think there were some dots that connected that led to this journey. Because I started 15 years ago as a physiotherapist. hat was my first role. I have a Masters in Orthopedic Physiotherapy and started off my own clinical practice back in 2006. I spent about 7-8 years doing physiotherapy, growing my practice to about three clinics, and then was thinking of further expansion. That is when I realized that maybe what I want from life is something different. So I started reflecting on these questions very early in life: Who am I really? What is the purpose of my life? What are the values that I want to live by?

And that kind of reflection back in 2012-13, led me to meet a professor from Columbia Business School, who had their own leadership training institute in the US. They had just opened an office here in India. And so I reached out to them saying that, “Guys hire me, I’ll be a great asset. I want to have a larger impact on the planet. So my purpose will be well aligned with my role at your institute.”

And they said, “What do we do with you because you’re a physiotherapist.” And I said, “I’m a growth mindset person, I love learning. I will do whatever needs to be done to thrive in this situation.” And that’s when I started picking up filming and editing. And that was my first role. I started filming and editing my way through LinkedIn and YouTube videos. And over the next four years between 2013 to 2017, traveled across the world, multiple times to the US to Hong Kong, to film with Ivy League professors. And all this while they were speaking to the camera, giving all the wisdom that they had of leadership, of mastering emotions, of difficult conversations, of influencing, of driving innovation. While they were speaking to the camera to their executives, for me, I was the one receiving the wisdom and the knowledge. I was learning all this from them.