TheCconnects: Can you tell our readers a little about your professional journey & how did you come current role/position?
Shaina Thomas: I am an English language & a soft skill trainer. I have been doing this for past 13 years and recently I started it as my business and surprisingly I am doing well. I have done multiple businesses and failed. Since I was good in language and was raised as a confident child, I took the opportunity of training others the language as a freelancer. Business always had been my main focus, so after all the earning and savings from my freelancing job I would take a break and start my business. I tried multiple businesses and finally that I was out of ideas I thought why don’t I train English and soft skills directly instead of doing it through vendors. So, I started THE BRAINIAC ACADEMY where we train students the language and soft skills with a more fun oriented interactive sessions leaving behind the old methods which I definitely find fascinating as well but this method has been working for me. I believe in a 100% result-oriented training, no more and no less.
TheCconnects: Who has influenced you the most and why?
Shaina Thomas: My struggles and my pain, I must admit that even the people who gave me these pains influence me. They mocked and were so confident about my failure but I wasn’t a child who really bothered but, each time someone would tell me you are never going to make it. I took it personally as a challenge but never revealed it to them.
The biggest motivation in my life is my father’s legs which walked out to work even if it was raining heavily or scorching sunny and my mother’s hands which always fed me and did all my chores to make sure I had an easy life. Every day I wake up and work even harder to make those hands and legs feel the best of every beautiful thing the world could offer.
TheCconnects: What are the biggest challenges you have faced in life & how did you overcome them?
Shaina Thomas: The biggest challenges were my habits, it was a competition between me versus me. I was a lazy person; I don’t feel ashamed to accept it as the efforts I had put to overcome this has been an incredible journey. I had to push my self so harder that during this period I had to discipline myself. I overcame few habits like procrastination, which was quite hard as I always lived in my nut shell. I always knew that I would make it one day but I never knew how. I learnt these over the period of time, in fact still learning. I was a care free child, I wasn’t the favorite or a top performing child. I was an ambivert but a confident one, I hadn’t had may great friends growing up. I was almost all the time opposed for my views and opinions. This wasn’t just the case in my school days but also during my career. Politics, a hell lot of sexual harassments, verbal abuse all have been a challenge. I had seen them at a very young age and I think that is why my heart and soul always craved to be on top so that no one could harass me or abuse me and play politics on me. Its been 13 years that I worked on my business building skills. It is now that people started recognizing my talent and hard work and I may say that I am somewhere near the entrance of the way to success.
TheCconnects: What lessons have you learned from your professional career?
Shaina Thomas: A lot of lessons, in fact more than any classroom.
Few among them are; planning is important so is execution. Business wasn’t for me until I hadn’t changed myself. We could be an extremely intelligent being but if we don’t put those intelligence as efforts, everything is in vein. When we really start working or putting efforts, we realize that the intelligence we brag about isn’t enough to reach where we really want. So, for me, despite being good in language I had to go through so many books and watch hundreds of tutorial videos to develop an interesting curriculum. I learnt that you can always learn from your competitors as well.
TheCconnects: How your service can help to resolve the pain points of your customers?
Shaina Thomas: Though I had a good command over the English language I realized with time that it was my only backbone. I got almost every opportunity just because I had the language. As I started training students as a freelance for various vendors, I realized that it wasn’t a cup of tea for most of the students to speak the language and crack interviews, even for people who had jobs but poor package due to communicative bars.
As a trainer I developed multiple ways of training the students in a way that they do not have to struggle learning the language. Creating an interest is the base of my curriculum. I try to analyze the difficulty faced by my students and program my curriculum in such a way that my student speaks confidently & fluently.
TheCconnects: What do you do in your free time?
Shaina Thomas: I watch a series called F.R.I.E.N.D.S on Netflix, which I like very much. I enjoy singing, listening to music and podcasts. I also enjoy watching informative videos on YouTube.
TheCconnects: Do you have any advice for those who want to be an entrepreneur/C-suite executive?
Shaina Thomas: The journey to becoming an entrepreneur or C-suite executive is challenging but rewarding. Here are some tips to help you on your way:
- Never give up; it may seem long and exhausting but the end result may surprise you
- Always focus on one thing at a time.
- Keep learning. Learning humbles you and keeps your foot on the ground. The more you learn the better leader you will make.
- Do whatever you love but not always being in your nut shell. Sometimes, we may have to do things we don’t like to get where we want to.
- Never take decisions with the influence of others, take calculative risks.
- Push yourself constantly because no one is coming.
- Remember that we all experience pain, let us not intentionally give the same experiences to others.
