We recently had the chance to connect with Lauren Balterman and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Lauren , thank you so much for joining us today. We’re thrilled to learn more about your journey, values and what you are currently working on. Let’s start with an ice breaker: What’s more important to you—intelligence, energy, or integrity?
Integrity is the most important to me because it’s the foundation everything else is built on. When I’m in integrity, my energy naturally comes through — clear, strong, and grounded — because I know I’m rooted in truth. Without integrity, energy can feel forced or performative. But with it, the way I show up, lead, and serve is real, powerful, and undeniable.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Lauren Balterman — a trauma-trained therapist turned business coach and brand strategist. For over 14 years I’ve studied human behavior and psychology, and I now use that depth to help coaches, healers, and service-based entrepreneurs scale to multi–six figures with identity-led messaging, subconscious sales strategy, and positioning that makes them the obvious choice in their space.
What makes my work unique is that I don’t separate business from who you are — I help you build a brand rooted in your lived experiences, values, and voice, so your marketing doesn’t just get attention, it actually converts. My story is one of owning every piece of my path — from working in schools and clinical settings, to overcoming personal struggles like an eating disorder and burnout — and turning it into the exact fuel that allows me to help others do the same.
Right now, I’m continuing to help service-based entrepreneurs build multi–six-figure businesses, while also running VIP days, traveling to clients all over the world, and growing my free community, The Changemakers. Inside, I share trainings and resources to help entrepreneurs stop blending in, stand out unapologetically, and scale with strategy and integrity.
Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
Before the world told me who I had to be…
I was the little girl who laughed too loud — Loud Laugh Laur, was my nickname.
The one who felt everything in her body — chills, goosebumps on my arms, like my soul was always tuned in.
I loved without limits. I dreamed without limits.
I was a caretaker, too. I adored my little brother and made it my mission that he always felt loved, always knew he was special.
I was endlessly curious. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to feel everything.
I was bold, unfiltered, the girl who would dance in the middle of the room and say exactly what was on her mind.
I wanted people to feel seen. To feel like they mattered.
And back then, I didn’t question if I was too much.
I didn’t worry if I was enough.
When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
I didn’t wait to heal to decide who I was going to be.
I decided in the thick of it.
As a teenager, I watched my family fracture and made a quiet contract with myself: this will not be wasted. If I was going to be handed chaos—divorce papers, slammed doors, the kind of tension you can taste—then I would turn it into fuel. Not later. Now. I didn’t have the language for “alchemizing pain” back then, but I knew I was going to make meaning out of the mess.
That’s when the obsession started: the human mind, the pattern underneath the pattern, why people do what they do. While other kids were memorizing vocab, I was studying people—body language at the dinner table, the stories we tell to survive, the way shame makes us small. I decided early that I would become the person who could hold hard things and still move.
Recovery from my eating disorder became the first proof that my contract was real. I learned to hear the difference between the voice that punishes and the voice that protects. I learned how to self-resource. I learned that truth sets you free—but only when you’re brave enough to speak it. So I spoke. In college, I wove my story into papers and presentations, not for applause but for oxygen—mine and theirs. Professors wrote, “Thank you for your courage.” Classmates whispered, “I thought I was the only one.” Every time that happened, the message landed again: your story is a bridge. Walk first. Then turn around and wave people across.
By 2011, when I stepped into coaching, I didn’t come in to play small or perform perfection. I came in with the same contract: no part of my life goes to waste. A mentor said, “Share your truth. People don’t trust the mask; they trust the human.” That unlocked the next level. I realized my edge wasn’t just knowledge—it was integration. I wasn’t teaching theory; I was teaching what I had bled for and rebuilt from.
So I built my work around three non-negotiables:
1. Own it. Name the thing. Shame can’t run the show when it’s standing under a spotlight.
2. Work it. Nervous system, mindset, story, strategy—do the reps, not just the reflection.
3. Transmute it. Turn lessons into leadership, wounds into wisdom, and then into words that move people.
That’s why my brand—and the way I coach—hits different. It isn’t manufactured bravado. It’s grounded power. The kind that comes from going first, telling the truth, and refusing to let pain write the ending. I have watched women take the parts they were most afraid to show and turn them into the reason clients lean in, the reason rooms go quiet, the reason their work becomes unavoidable. That never stops being holy to me.
Because this is the loop I’m here to close:
That early decision—that my pain would not be wasted—is exactly why I now teach people to bring all of themselves into their brand. It’s why I built my identity-led messaging and subconscious sales method.
What started with me learning to own my story has evolved into teaching others how to own theirs—and watching their businesses and lives transform when they finally stop hiding and start leading with who they truly are.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What would your closest friends say really matters to you?
My closest friends would say what really matters to me is truth, depth, and impact.
They’d tell you I care about people being seen for who they actually are, not the mask they wear. I care about stories — not just telling them, but pulling the meaning out of them, the identity behind them, the why beneath the what. I care about helping people break free from survival mode so they can finally live as their fullest, boldest selves.
They’d say I don’t give a damn about surface-level success, vanity metrics, or playing the part. What lights me up is when someone owns their voice, steps into their power, and stops hiding.
They’d tell you I believe in radical honesty and radical ownership. Nothing shifts until you tell the truth and claim your role in it. They’d tell you that communication matters deeply to me — not just talking, but saying what you mean, listening for what isn’t being said, and using your voice to build bridges instead of walls.
They’d say I am obsessed with understanding yourself on the deepest level. Because when you know yourself — your patterns, your stories, your beliefs — you finally have the power to change them. To rewire what’s been running you. To break the generational cycles you were handed and build something better.
And they’d absolutely say that at the heart of it all is family. That no matter how big the vision gets, I’ll never sacrifice what matters most: raising my daughter, being present, and building a life and business that ripple outward with meaning.
And they’d also say this: I don’t just want success for myself — I want it to ripple. For my clients. For my daughter. For the women who watch me and realize, “If she can, so can I.”
At the core, my closest friends would say what matters most to me is this: turning pain into purpose, truth into strategy, and human experience into leadership. That’s how cycles get broken. That’s how lives get changed. And that’s how legacies are
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. What do you think people will most misunderstand about your legacy?
What most people misunderstand about my legacy is that it isn’t about me.
It’s not about accolades, status, or being remembered for a highlight reel. My legacy is about the ripple — the women who broke free because they worked with me, the families who were healed because cycles were broken, the daughters who got to see their mothers lead fully expressed and unapologetic.
People often think legacy is something you leave behind when you’re gone. I see it differently. Legacy is lived now — in every truth you tell, every story you own, every pattern you refuse to repeat. My legacy is not just what I build, it’s what I help others step into, so their lives ripple out into even more lives.
That’s the part most people miss: my legacy isn’t about building monuments to myself. It’s about building people who become monuments of what’s possible.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Laurennicolebalterman
- Facebook: Lauren Balterman
Image Credits
Delaney Handel
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