Identical twins, Jan and Jillian Yuhas attended Adler University and both received a Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy. As Relationship and Lifestyle Advisors of Entwined Lifestyle, Inc. who want to see others living and loving their best life, this motivated them to become Certified Professional Life Coaches while attending Life Coach Institute of Orange County. After learning how nonverbal communication played a major role in one’s intimate relationship, Jan and Jillian became Certified in Body Language and Deception Detection at Stu Dunn Behavioural Science Consultancy and Certified Micro-Expressions Experts from American Psychologist, Paul Ekman Micro Expressions Training. As their desire for growth continued, the both of them went onto become Certified Mediators at Center of Conflict Resolution in Divorce and Family Mediation.
Growing up in a twinship, Jan and Jillian constantly gave each other sage advice whether the other was ready to hear it or not, and not much as changed about this today. Their mirroring and reflecting was a never-ending reminder towards their self-development and growth. As their secure bond provided unconditional support, it induced their discovery of healthy differences among their viewpoints.
Today, they enjoy writing about modern dating and relationships struggles that are relatable to anyone searching for love and learning to love themselves. The two of them bring an educational spin to their witty writings to keep it interesting yet worth reading. They have been featured on online magazines and news outlets such as YahooLifestyle, YourTango, Latino, Everydaypower, Unwritten, ThoughtCatalog, and GoDates.
Hey Jan & Jillian, can you introduce yourselves to us?
We are identical twin sisters who are Relationship and Lifestyle Advisors at EntwinedLifestyle. We believe that each piece of a person’s lifestyle (love, work, & social) plays a huge role in their ultimate happiness. We focus on love goals but have found more and more people asking us to help them improve all three areas of their lifestyle collectively because of they all matter in becoming the best version of one’s self. And when one is able to have a healthy and loving relationship with themselves, then they can accomplish anything! We grew up in a rural town but have been in Chicago for over 20 years and now get the opportunity to coach people across the globe through our online coaching services.
Can you take us through your journey as to how you arrived at where you both are now?
Fifteen years ago we began volunteering at the National Runaway Safeline – this ended up being life changing although we didn’t know it at the time. Day in and day out, we helped countless runaway teens feel safe enough to return home through mediated calls with their parents. The biggest challenge was always resolving conflict within a broken family dynamic. Our experience as volunteers lit the fire for us to attend grad school and become Marriage and Family Therapists. We later went on to get certified in professional life coaching which is where to are today, coaching our clients. It was pretty clear that this job is our life’s calling because we 100% believe that healthy relationships give us purpose and true happiness.
What are a typical 24 hours like for you both?
We try to reserve the first two hours of the day for our self-care time to read, exercise, and indulge in a warm cup of coffee. This rejuvenates us and gets us in the right frame of mind to start the day. This doesn’t always work out, but we strive for it as the relationship with ourselves is #1. Most days are filled by coaching our clients, responding to their emergency relationship dilemmas, and working through their life challenges. We also make sure we find time to shoot videos/photos, write, spend time together doing normal sisterly things. It’s more or less non-stop from the time the day starts, but we love it so the time goes by and we end every day feeling truly blessed. By end of the day, we part ways to our own homes and cook a healthy meal. We’re both good in the kitchen and love how cooking can be a creative outlet.
As relationship and lifestyle advisors, can you talk us through how you help your clients to feel inner happiness and fulfillment?
Great question! Happiness and fulfillment are what we’re all searching for and it’s not easy to achieve them while dealing with the stresses of today’s hectic time. We help our clients achieve their goals by living in the present, finding self-acceptance, establishing healthy boundaries, pursuing their passion, and communicating their needs assertively with others. These simple tools are game changers for our clients in their quest for inner happiness and fulfillment.
Can you tell us how you launched Entwined Lifestyle?
We launched the company because we realised that the success of our first company was really built on the strength of the relationships we developed with our clients and their families during a high-stress time. Outside of our professional lives, we were always the ones asked the tough question about why a relationship had gone wrong or how to fix it, so it was only natural for us to start up Entwined Lifestyle to help more people.
Our motivation for starting Entwined Lifestyle was to not only help others but to also have more personal life balance and happiness. With our first company, we felt our lives were becoming way too restricted. We were doing 80 hour work weeks without the freedom to live and make ourselves happy. We realised we needed change, and we acted.
What was the incentive behind it?
Entwined Lifestyle has given us the freedom we were looking for, the balance we craved, and the happiness that we get from helping people solve their toughest relationship problems. Being able to work from anywhere has also allowed us to travel more and live a better life.
Does working together as a business partnership come with such pitfalls despite growing up in close knitted twinship?
Our business partnership has always been great. We think differently and have different personalities but we will always build on each other’s strengths to create a cohesive vision for the business. We don’t agree on everything but we agree completely on the important things so we’re able to overcome any differences we have.
At what point did you realise that you were able to turn Entwined Lifestyle into a profitable venture?
There wasn’t any single light bulb moment, but we realised pretty quickly after starting the company that there are a lot of people struggling with relationships and we were good at helping them. Our mission is to make a difference by helping others achieve their relationship goals. Building the business side of things took some work, but we are risk takers and don’t give up easily. We keep grinding and creating until our goal is reached. It takes believing in yourself and having a passion to keep pushing forward even when things get tough. When you wake up each day with a vision in mind, it’s much easier to keep lighting the fire day after day.
As you continue to grow, what important factors have you both considered when looking at the scalability of your business model?
We both love coaching individuals one-on-one to build a solid relationship, so our clients can really flourish with our deep and personalised service. Right now, we only can take on so many individual clients because of the time, love, and energy that goes into helping them reach their goals. We will be launching our group coaching programs and online in-home programs very soon. We will continue to keep our one-on-one coaching clients, but realise that the things we’ve learned over the years can help a lot of people by scaling up.
Where can you see your selves within the next 3-5 years?
In the next 3-5 years, we plan to be helping more clients attract the love of their life to live their best life. There’s so much power in transformation, we couldn’t imagine not coaching individuals and helping them build their inner confidence. Our hearts and souls SMILE when our clients have successful moments. That’s when you know you are living out your life purpose.
Can you tell us what areas you have both struggled in professionally?
The vulnerability is tough. It was definitely something hard for us to overcome on public formats, as we have always been more of the private type. Creating vulnerability is 100% essential when attracting your ideal client because they need to know you are real and can overcome relationship challenges. For us being more introverted, we thrive in one-on-one relationships and it’s not easy for us to share ourselves openly. But, here we are today!
Have any of you ever had any other mentor? If so how has this benefitted you to grow?
Yes, we both have had mentors. It’s important to have guidance and support when trying to grow and reach goals. We wouldn’t be where we are today without them. Learning from mentors who are already successful has allowed us to understand what mistakes to avoid without the pain of having to feel them ourselves. When it comes to achieving success, we believe having a mentor at some point in your life is one of the most rewarding things you can do. By investing in yourself and others will want to invest in you.
What outlets do use to market Entwined Lifestyle?
We market on YourTango, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and word-of-mouth. We use these outlets to educate, relate and connect with our clients and audience.
What do you believe are the common misconceptions about being in the coaching industry?
One of the most common misconceptions about the coaching industry that it’s just like therapy. Therapy focuses on the emotional release of past experiences and the deep-rooted pain behind their present struggles. As for coaching, it is an interactive process that includes action steps and mindset exercises to help clients reach their specific goals. The benefit of coaching helps clients remove their self-limiting beliefs that stand in the way of their goals while achieving positive results in their present life. Coaching moves us forward towards a better life.
What is the best piece of advice you have received to date?
Our maternal grandmother once told us, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then say nothing at all.” She inspired us in so many ways growing up. She became our biggest role model in accepting people for who they are as well as ourselves. It wasn’t until later, that we realised this gift would become so paramount in our lives. The real magic happens in being kind to others.
What is the number 1 critical lesson you have learned in your career so far?
The number one critical lesson we’ve learned is that each person works at their own pace and a one-mind-fits-all approach doesn’t serve them in becoming the best version of themselves.
How do you create an evenly balanced work and personal life?
We balance our work and personal life very easily. We work from home, which allows us to be flexible with our schedules. We always make sure we have the freedom to schedule workouts, plan lunch dates with friends, go on romantic dates with partners, and run errands around our meetings with clients. By maintaining an hour-by-hour daily structure, we can really fit it all in. It all comes down to the choices we make for ourselves.
What gives you ultimate career satisfaction?
Our ultimate career satisfaction is actually our ultimate life satisfaction. It happens when we see our clients lives transform as they achieve their relationship goals. We are literally on cloud nine every time it happens. There’s not a client that we’ve worked with where their progress hasn’t made us feel proud and happy. Their success becomes our happiness.
Which other leading entrepreneurs and pioneering game changers do you also admire and why?
We really admire Gabrielle Bernstein. She is all about being one’s most authentic self and finding in alignment with your truth. She’s very inspiring because her words are raw, yet beautifully spoken when it comes to being clear about one’s intentions, relationships, and possibilities.
How would you say you are intending to use your voice to educate others in the lifestyle coaching industry?
We use our voice in the relationship coaching industry by helping others see their self-worth, giving them the confidence to attract a partner and fulfill their lifestyle goals. When one begins to fully love and accept themselves, they create this power to attract the type of partner who will love them deeply in return. Not only do they reach their love goals, but they also have a new found confidence that allows them to rise in their careers and have healthier relationships with their family and friends. We see time and time again that when you strengthen your relationship with yourself, one’s love/work/social life starts getting better, too.
What is a good article or book you have read recently?
A recent one that we found to be powerful is ‘Psycho-Cybernetics’ by Maxwell Maltz. It’s all about self-development and what makes someone productive and unproductive throughout their life. It dives deep into how one thinks and feels, and the behaviors that follow based on their own perceptions. As humans, we are our thoughts and mindset is everything. People would be surprised to learn that the most successful people in life have this unimaginably deep confident belief in themselves and in achieving their goals.
How do you measure your own terms of success?
Measuring success can be determined in so many ways, but ultimately success for us comes from being happy and doing what we love. There is no better feeling. When one finds their passion and pursues it to the fullest that in itself is a success.
What does #BEYOUROWN mean to you both?
#BEYOUROWN to us means owning who you are inside and out and not comparing yourself to others. Being able to love yourself for who you are. Everyone deserves a chance to shine in their own authentic light and be seen for who they are. When we confidently learn to live in alignment, we lead a life without any reservations. It is up to us to decide what path we lead.
Lastly what is next for you both and Entwined Lifestyle?
Hopefully, experience more opportunities where we can share our passion and mission in helping individuals reach their relationship goals and live their best life.
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Website: https://entwinedlifestyle.com
