I am Lochan Narayanan, an L&D professional, and a certified coach. I am also the founder of – OfExperiences, a personal development platform that aims to enable individuals to navigate opportunities during different life stages.
I grew up in Delhi in a typical South Indian family. My parents always encouraged me to do different things. I did everything in school from sports, debates to music and art. Probably other than academics, I did everything. I was not a poor student; I just wasn’t as good as my parents thought I should be.
When I was in high school, I knew that I didn’t have any interest in science and was crystal clear about my interest in doing something related to people. I was very keen on law or psychology. However, my progressive family wasn’t in favor of me doing psychology as they didn’t think there were a lot of career options for a psychologist. I relented and did my bachelor’s in management from one of the prestigious schools in Delhi – College of Business Studies, Delhi University.
While studying in college, I was not very keen to do an MBA, but I didn’t have any other options and I gave into peer pressure. I appeared for MBA exams while sitting for the 2 to 3 companies that came for campus placements. I got through a good MBA college and also had a job.
I got a chance to move to the collections team and slowly made a move to training.
I loved what I did in training. I never looked back. I learned the skills on my own, build my niche, underwent different certifications. However, most importantly, I helped my stakeholders solve a lot of performance issues through the right training and learning interventions. Without realizing it, I gravitated towards areas where I had strengths – building relationships, solving problems, and designing relevant solutions.
But that too was not my final destination, after having spent about 12+ years in L&D, I decided to take a break from it in 2019.
I was very keen to do something more and different, but I wasn’t sure how to proceed further. I was tired, burnt out, and was also dealing with an extremely toxic work culture. I decided to take a step back and rethink my entire career strategy from thereon. Around this time, is when I started my coach training. The peer coaching sessions and support from other coaches gave me a lot of confidence to take this break and relook at my career.
I took a break for a few months and started picking up independent projects. I set up Spinach – an L&D consulting organization focused on creating custom solutions. I started working with mid-sized organizations in building people’s capabilities. While I was doing this, I also started coaching a lot of people – mid to senior professionals-mostly women. What was striking was that they all were asking questions about their career steps to me. This made me realize that there were others like me – trying to figure out the next steps to their life and career.
This was the genesis of OfExperiences. What started out as just a peer-sharing platform, quickly turned to a personal development platform.
At OfExperiences, we have different cards/products for different stages of individuals – from young professionals to senior professionals, from people looking to pivot to young mothers joining work after maternity leave. We have 8 different products. Each of these products is a cohort-based program that has a curated set of 11 services – from 1:1 coaching to resume building, from masterclasses to networking events. The aim is to provide every participant a suite of services that helps them navigate their situation better.
Along side to this amazing professional journey, I am an avid trekker. I have done some interesting expeditions, like cycling trip from Manali to Leh Ladak which is a 700+km through high altitude terrains, summited Kilimanjaro. I simply love to experiment and do different things.
I love to travel, any single
opportunity to travel is most welcome. My dream, besides scaling up
OfExperiences, is to build a huge house where I can run a dog daycare. I would
love to train and be surrounded by dogs completely enjoying their company.
For more, you can find me on
Instagram - @lochannarayanan
LinkedIn - Lochan Narayanan
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Lochan Narayanan
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