1-on-1 Life & Leadership Coaching
Every meaningful shift begins with the right questions. Not the ones you've been asking — the ones you've been avoiding.
What do you really want?
What are you really all about?
What are you prepared to do?
These aren't warm-up questions. They're the foundation. Most leaders I work with have spent years optimizing their performance, their teams, their strategy — without ever stopping to answer them clearly. And that gap between performance and clarity is almost always where the trouble lives.
I know because I've been there. Twelve years running restaurants taught me that you can be fully committed to something and still be running on the wrong operating system. The tactics change. The pressure shifts. But if the foundation isn't solid, none of it holds.
That's what coaching is for.
You Might Be In The Right Place If…
You've built real things and achieved real results — but something's off. The drive that got you here feels more like a burden than a fuel source. You're performing, but you're not leading the way you want to.
Or you're at an inflection point. A new role, a new chapter, a transition you didn't fully choose. The old playbook worked, but it doesn't anymore, and you're not sure what replaces it.
Or you're simply tired of firefighting. Of being reactive when you want to be intentional. Of knowing what you should do and still not doing it.
If any of that sounds familiar, we should talk.
What The Work Looks Like
Coaching isn't consulting. I'm not going to hand you a plan and tell you to execute it. That's not what creates lasting change.
What I do is create the conditions for you to see clearly — your situation, your patterns, what you actually want, and what's genuinely in the way. From there, we co-create what's next. Not what works for someone else in a similar situation. What works for you, in your context, given who you are.
The work unfolds in three phases, though rarely in a straight line.
Inquiry — We start by getting clear on what's actually going on. Not the story you've been telling, but what's underneath it. This is where powerful questions do their work. Most clients say the first few sessions alone shift something significant.
Exploration — We go deeper into the territory. The beliefs running the show beneath the surface. The blind spots. The assumptions that feel like facts. The places where you're spending energy that isn't yours to spend. This is the uncomfortable middle — and it's where the real work happens.
Discovery — Clarity starts to become action. Not more tactics, but different orientation. You begin to lead — and live — from a different place. Decisions get easier. Energy comes back. The gap between who you are and how you're showing up starts to close.
Three areas. One integrated system.
Every coaching engagement is different, but the terrain is consistent. We work across three areas — not in isolation, but as an integrated whole.
Values and purpose.
What you're actually about, not what you've been told to care about. This becomes the anchor for every decision — the thing that makes clarity possible and authenticity non-negotiable.
Beliefs and mindset.
The internal lens through which you see everything. Most of the ceiling you're hitting isn't external. It's the narratives, assumptions, and mental models you've been running on without questioning. Shifting these is where the real leverage is.
Focused action.
Not more doing — different doing. Aligned with your values, grounded in a clearer mindset, and designed to actually create the outcomes you're after. This is where insight becomes momentum.
The power isn't in any one of these areas. It's in how they integrate. When your actions align with a mindset that's grounded in genuine purpose, you show up differently — and everything around you starts to shift.
The ShiftOS underlies all of it
The framework running through every coaching engagement is the Shift OS — four fundamental shifts in how you operate. From perception to perspective. From control to influence. From time management to energy management. From binary thinking to workability.
You can read more about the ShiftOS on the home page.
“Thinking more clearly and a different kind of empowerment.”
"Mariano has an incredible ability to help navigate BIG challenges by asking the right questions, offering meaningful perspective, and presenting options that expand your thinking — without ever trying to hand you the answer. What I appreciate most is how empowered I feel after our conversations. He creates the kind of space that allows leaders to think more clearly, lead more confidently, and make decisions that are deeply aligned with their values and goals."
Marisa Williams, CEO, Girl Scouts River Valleys
FAQs
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Many people define them differently, but for the sake of simplicity and to get the point across, I like to say that therapy (generally speaking) focuses more on the past to understand how you got to your present.
Coaching, instead, will look at your present and ask you where you want to be in the future; and from there we co-create how to achieve your goals.
In practice, coaching does look at your past but merely for context without making it the main focus. And therapy does look at your future because in the end therapists also want you to live a fulfilling life going forward. So there is some overlap between the two.
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The distinction is real and worth understanding, especially if you're trying to figure out which one you need.
Coaching is exploratory and relationship-driven. I don't come in with a predetermined answer — because the most important work usually isn't about the presenting problem. It's about the underlying patterns, blind spots, and assumptions driving it. A coaching engagement is co-created. We follow the thread wherever it leads.
Consulting is more focused and solution-oriented. You bring a specific challenge — your online presence is weak, your business is being outpaced by competitors, your team isn't aligned — and I bring expertise, a diagnostic approach, and a concrete plan. I have a point of view, and I share it directly.
What makes my consulting different is that it never stays purely transactional. The same three questions that open every coaching engagement open every consulting engagement: What are you about? What do you want? What are you willing to do about it? Identity and clarity come before tactics — always. That's the Shift OS applied to a business context.
So if you're a leader working through something internal — a career inflection, a leadership challenge, a question about what's next — coaching is likely the right fit. If you're a business owner who needs to build a stronger online presence and compete smarter locally, consulting is where we start. And often, the line between the two blurs in the best possible way.
Curious about the consulting work? Learn more here →
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The initial call is about making sure we are the right fit for one another.
That’s why it is completely free, and it can take up to an hour depending on the questions we may have for each other.
Relationships are based on trust and understanding. So, the primary purpose is to get to know each other and see how we jive together. We all have different backgrounds, beliefs, perceptions, and biases, so the best way I can be of service to you is to ensure we have a baseline commonality in those areas.
In the end, I want to work with people who want to work with me, and I’m sure you’d feel the same way. Having a connection is very important to me in my coaching.
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I’ve always known I’d get into coaching one day; it was just a matter of time.
The first time I was exposed to it was over 20 years ago, and it changed my life. Talk about having blind spots!
After several personal and difficult situations related to health and family, many things changed for me, particularly my perspective on life and purpose.
That’s when I formed the idea of shifting from perception to perspective; otherwise, we are stuck or stagnant in old ways and old thinking.
Life is so precious and fragile that before you know it, you’ll be wondering at some point what wake you're leaving behind and whether you've made a difference in the process.
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I’ve always been very curious and very perceptive of other people’s feelings and reactions.
At the age of 12, my dad got me the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, marking me forever.
In college, I almost got into psychology, but instead, I nearly double-majored in it from all the courses I took. My major is in Business Management with a focus on Information Technology.
I worked in management and IT consulting for several years in the corporate world. For the last 15 years of my professional life, before becoming a coach, I was an entrepreneur in one of the hardest industries: the restaurant industry.
Being a restaurateur is hard, and I loved it. Being a chef was my passion, and I ended up having 2 restaurants, and a full-service catering business ‘on the side’, I did private and large events with my open-fire grilling concept that was always part of the show wherever I took it. And I even cooked for a few events that held over 1,200 guests – those are fun! To this day, I still miss my old staff (my chosen family for many years, really), my peers, and fellow restaurateurs. That is such a wonderful community that I still miss to this day.
So my professional experience is quite varied and diverse, but leadership has always been the theme.
From a cultural perspective, I was born and raised in Argentina, lived in Canada, Scotland, Mexico, and now live in Southern California. So I know what it’s like to embrace different worlds, cultures, languages, and diversity.
I understand the power of shifting lenses, adapting, and thriving in change.
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Outside of coaching, photography is my go-to practice when not reading about growth and leadership.
We are a family of five: my wife, my son, and our two four-legged children, whom we sometimes call ‘dogs’.
Of course, I still love cooking—the only difficulty is that I still haven't mastered the art of cooking in small batches! So I solve that problem by sharing my food with friends and family or simply inviting them over for a get-together.
Ready For A Shift?
Sometimes a single conversation changes the direction of everything. Not because I have the answers — but because the right questions, asked in the right space, have a way of making what was invisible suddenly obvious.
The first call is free, and it's not a pitch. It's a conversation to see if we're the right fit.