What if the real reason you feel stuck isn’t a lack of knowledge but old programming running your life on autopilot? In this episode of the Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Deekron Krikorian, MBA, and transformation coach for high achievers and the founder of the Identity Liberation Movement. Deekron shares how a “survival identity” forms in childhood, how it silently drives perfectionism and why inner work is the missing piece for high achievers who want authentic leadership. You’ll also hear why metabolic health matters for your mind, your mood, and your decision-making.

What You Will Learn:

How early life experiences shape a subconscious identity that continues to influence leadership, decisions, and behavior.

Why high achievement often comes from survival patterns rather than true self-expression.

How perfectionism and people-pleasing can limit entrepreneurial success and personal fulfillment.

Why leaving corporate environments can trigger anxiety and loss of direction for high performers.

How identity work reveals the hidden patterns behind procrastination, burnout, and self-sabotage.

Why information and credentials alone are not enough to create lasting transformation.

How internal emotional stress differs from external stress—and why both must be addressed.

The role cortisol and chronic stress play in decision-making, energy, and long-term health.

Why habits and mindset tools fail when layered over unhealed emotional programming.

How metabolic health directly impacts cognition, clarity, and leadership capacity.

What self-leadership looks like beyond discipline, including emotional mastery and boundaries.

How to communicate without triggering fear or defensiveness in high-stakes conversations.

Why vision requires autonomy, sovereignty, and internal alignment to come to life.

How identity liberation can release long-held pressure and restore a sense of freedom.

Why individual inner work contributes to collective leadership and cultural change.

Resource:

Deekron Krikorian

LinkedIn

Book The Nine Shifts: The Mind-First Method to Transform Your Body and Your Life

Leading Visionaries Podcast

Join the Leading Visionaries Community

Make a Donation to Support the Show

Creative Age Consulting Group

LVP 112 Deekron

===

Now here's your host, angel b Hardwell.

Korian today's guest, dron Korian, MBA is a transformation coach for high achievers and founder of the Identity Liberation Movement. He helps seasoned executives and entrepreneurs. Break free from self-doubt, inner pressure, and outdated patterns so they can lead with clarity, energy, and authenticity.

Drawing on his background as a big four CPA management consultant, and tech startup founder, Decron developed his healthy high performer method featured in his bestselling book The Nine Shifts. His Whole Person coaching approach blends identity work mindset, and metabolic health, helping leaders transform.

I'm so excited to have you here today. Welcome to the show, Deron. Thank you, Angela. Excited to be here. Beautiful. Well, I love to start these conversations, um, either talking about leading or vision. And so I think with you, I'd like to start with leading. Were you the kid when you were little that was, you know, getting everybody together and leading them off on adventures or was leadership something that you've developed over time?

So whether, uh, whether it was like being the captain of my soccer team. Or being a president of an organization I was a part of. I think having the leadership sort of gene in a way was there for me from a young age. Mm-hmm. Beautiful. So let's talk about vision then. You know, where did the vision come from?

Are you from a long line of visionaries or was vision something that you were, you know, an anomaly in your family? Let's talk about your visionary skills and gifts. Thank you. I think more the latter. More the latter. My, my dad is incredible human being and he, he's very, uh, very structured and very routine.

Another category is also called the Commander in like a different personality type. Um, that I've done, I think it was called the 16 personalities. They call it the commander, but it is basically the one who says, here's where we're going. Follow me. Hmm. Beautiful. So what is your experience with receiving vision?

You know, maybe can you share with us the very first vision that you remember having, maybe when you were a kid, maybe when you were the captain of the soccer team, maybe when it was, you know, when you were the president of an organization as you were coming up, if you could share with us, like your experience of receiving the vision.

Mm-hmm. Because I think if you have a vision, you need autonomy. You need sovereignty. And that's why I didn't last in corporate America very long. Um, you know, IIN as a big four CPA for three years, that was really my dad pushing me to, to go into a safe career, having been an immigrant to this country. You know, he went through certain struggles and challenges and he himself became a banker and was able to rebuild his life when we got to America, literally with nothing in our pockets.

He saw that as the right way. Um, but I was different than that and I, I wanted something more, more. The more I went down my career angel, the more I wanted to make impact. Making income wasn't enough. Um, you know, so I went from Big four to one of the best business schools in the country to one of the top consulting firms in the world.

It did. I felt like there was something more there. I think that was sort of the vision maybe that I received. Like the pull towards, there's more for you. You know? Mm-hmm. This is not all, like you didn't come this far just to come this far. Mm. I love that. Well, you know, it's interesting. I like to talk about the calling, you know, and for me the calling is the part of you that was born to deliver something into the world, being met.

Like what was the vision there? What inspired you besides this calling? What did you see that you wanted to do? Yeah, and to be honest, at first I didn't know. Mm-hmm. I just said the nudge that the nudge should do something else. Something that I was gonna be more passionate about, but it wasn't clear to me yet.

And so, I mean, I left Big Four 'cause I didn't love accounting. I went to business school, had management consulting as a strategist, and I enjoyed that more. But that's when I said, uh, I don't wanna do this anymore. I wanna move into my own thing. I don't know what it is yet. Mm-hmm. And of course, having layoffs accelerated that.

Like I had a real dark period. Mm-hmm. Because going from corporate to entrepreneurship is night and day. And that transition, I found it very hard because growing up I was a people pleaser and I was a rule follower, and I was a perfectionist. You know, my initial traumas caused me to survive through pleasing and being perfect, and being the good son and the teacher's pet, and the perfect employee.

And that'll get you far in corporate. Mm-hmm. But that will not get you far when you're out on your own trying to create something new. Mm-hmm. There are no rules to follow. And so I was like a fish outta water and it really made me anxious. Mm-hmm. I was procrastinating, I felt nowhere near my potential and I said, wow, I feel really stuck and unfulfilled and I need to do something.

It's emotional and it controls our decisions. It close and controls how we act, how we speak up or don't speak up. There's a lot of fear under there that we carry that we don't realize, and until we tap into it, until we go to that deeper level to understand. Okay. What were the emotions or the fears that I grew up with?

How did they impact me and what decisions did I make? Because when we have a, we have an impactful experience, you know, small trauma, big trauma, whatever it is, and we all have them. Make no mistake, everybody listening to this right now has been through something. And when that happens, we try to cope. As children, we don't have coping skills yet.

Well those patterns are running and it's you creating that without you realizing it's at the subconscious level. So when I did that work, it was like the missing piece. 'cause sure I had dreamt of being an entrepreneur my whole life. I had been in business school, I knew what to do. Lack of knowledge wasn't stopping me.

But the lack of internal awareness was stopping me. Mm-hmm. And that was the huge breakthrough that I needed. That was like the missing piece that what I call liberated my identity. And that's the work I'm passionate about doing now. And I'm starting a whole movement about that now, and it's probably gonna be my next book, but I think it's what the world needs.

I, I was also the teacher's pet, you know what I mean? That's the first time the pet one came in. So, um, I, I love this idea of doing the inner work and. The fact of the matter is absolutely decron. We have, at this point in evolution, there's all the information is available to everybody everywhere, 24 7. The information is there and, and I think the most important thing I want our listeners to hear is it's not about the information.

Um, you know, you have this book, the Nine Shifts. Maybe what's the first shift that you would mm-hmm. Encourage them to consider, uh, in order to make the life that they're here to make? Yeah. Awesome. Awesome question. I think that first shift for anybody who wants to set out on a big goal, on a vision, in a sense, your vision is like a seed, and you have to plant that seed in soil that's fertile, but your soil isn't fertile until you free yourself from those patterns.

I see with my clients all the time, they don't express themselves as much as they sh as they want to because maybe back in the day they were discouraged and they had to censor themselves and they couldn't speak up, or they were put down and all those things. You know, our. A lot of our emotional responses as adults started in childhood.

So the ones that stayed with you, there's an immature part of us that we need to transform. And so I think that's really my biggest message is that inner work is the missing piece because if you try to layer like a new habit over old programming, it's not gonna work. Yeah. Beautiful. I love the idea of putting the seeds in the right soil.

We invite you to join us and support this podcast by making a donation@leadingvisionariespodcast.com. If you're interested in finding out more about how you can receive support for getting your vision out of the air and onto the ground in a way that's both impact and income producing the best support is found in collaboration with other leading visionaries.

With the people who you think might benefit from our content. I do wanna say a huge thank you to all of our listeners who are downloading, rating and reviewing. We're now downloading in 63 countries from all over the world. I wanna shout out this week to our listeners in uh Belgium, The Bahamas, and Botswana.

We might as well do all the bees and we'll be right back with Decron Gregorian.

Your word is your wand. And as the leader, your ability to articulate and communicate your vision is essential to its materialization and monetization. Please enjoy with our compliments, a free copy of the book, be Heard By Millions, and Live Your Destiny, which was a number one new release in three categories.

To get you started, the book is yours by visiting gift dot Leading visionaries podcast.com.

I'd love your thoughts on. Kind of the awakening of the collective, because I think a lot of the inner work that we do, you know, sometimes even with help, even with a great coach, even with a consultant like myself or a medicine person, or you know, some kind of a facilitator, sometimes it feels like we're doing our own work, but there's this bigger collective.

And I think we're all in this together, you know? And I think that. We look at the state of humanity, we look at the state of the world, you know, there's still war, there's still famine, there's still all these issues that can be solved if we get out of our own way. And I think the collective, you know, we have to kind of start Saab, stop sabotaging ourselves.

We have to learn the things that we carry and those emotional blocks that we have. And if we transform, you know, at the level of a collective of a group of a community. There's so much power in that because yeah, sure. Like a few people, if they transform, that's nice, but they're still gonna be fighting everybody else who's else stuck in their ego, everybody else who's stuck in their old patterns.

It's the right habits, it's empowerment practices. Uh, you know, part of what, what my transformation book The Nine Shifts is about, um, is that it's, it's about mind and body and the how can we be our best in mind and body so that we could be our best at work in life. And if you're gonna show up as the best version of yourself consistently.

That's gonna create dramatically better results for you, your team, your community, everyone around you. And then people will start following your lead. If they see you transform, they see you step up and overcome certain things that you are opening up and being vulnerable, vulnerable about. Now you're gonna create evangelists.

Mm-hmm. But metabolic is literally inner work as well at the chemical level within the body. So can you speak a little bit about the inner metabolic work that you help people with? For sure, for sure. And and that's one thing I noticed that was missing Angel, is that a lot of people will focus either on the mind or the body, but those two things are not two separate entities.

You know, anybody could follow a diet plan and try to eat healthier for a little while. Anybody could try to get more steps and they can try to do the habits, but if they're gonna be self-sabotaging at an emotional level, it's gonna be for Naugh. And that's a real problem because if you wanna show up as your best, again, you have to have energy, you have to have longevity.

Cognition and thinking is all about metabolic health. It's about keeping, you know, blood sugar managed. Because when blood sugar is high, it damages the brain and it affects neural pathways. And of course it affects your, your energy, it affects your longevity. There's so much to it. And if we don't show in, you know, in terms of the physical body.

Like you just have to do it. And so you have to, you know, sleep at the, at a certain time, you have to eat the right foods, you have to move your body. You have to, you know. Just follow a, a, a good routine and he really instilled that in us. And that discipline and that that structure structured way of living really has helped me even to this day, and that's what I pay forward to folks along with all of the mindset sort of gifts and mentors and programs that I had that empowered me and freed me from the anxiety and the pressure I was putting on myself.

So I'd love to have you speak a little bit about how you support your clients who are actually choosing to step into entrepreneurship or how you supported yourself in that journey. Uh, changing your identity from corporate to CEO. Mm-hmm. For sure. So yeah, stress is huge. Stress is. Our enemy. It's the enemy of good decision making.

It's the enemy of relationships. It's the enemy of longevity. Disease comes from stress. Like that's the thing we have to manage as humans. And the first thing is understanding. There's two types of stress. Um, well, I should say there's two sources of stress. So in my book I talk about the two stress types of stress, which is like good stress and bad stress, which is called eustress or distress.

And that creates a lot of internal stress, which then leads to all of the stress related actions like emotional eating, emotional drinking. We try to cope with that. We try to deal with that, and that is one of the foundational stressors that we have to. I have to understand. So that's really the first two shifts in my book are about how do we manage that better?

And then there's external stress. So external stress is what's happening around you. Um, it's a relationship, it's a workplace dynamic. It's hearing the news and getting upset. You know, what are you consuming? All of that is external, but it also then impacts the internal. So we have to understand. How to communicate better, more authentically.

Not from having a cower or censor yourself, but speak up in a way that honors a person very tactful so they don't get defensive. But also you're heard and being heard is not easy. In this day and age, we feel like we're not seeing, we feel like we're not heard, but having that, creating that superpower really puts you at a, at a, at a higher level and it's, it brings down external stress.

So those are the two stressor we want to handle, because if not, you know, things like elevated cortisol levels. It hurts our health, it hurts our energy, it hurts our metabolism, it hurts our body over time. Um, cortisol is a, is a sort of energy mobilizing hormone that deprioritizes everything else. So everything else slows down.

Yeah. Beautiful. Well, in the, the last couple of minutes that we have decron, if you have like one client that you have a story that you'd love to share so that our listeners can discern whether it might be a fit for them to work with you, like one of your favorite success stories, now would be a great time to share that.

Awesome. Would love to. Um, yeah, I love showcasing my clients because when they're ready to step up and transform, that's a big moment in their life. That takes courage, that takes commitment. And I'll give you a quick synopsis. So my client, Janice, she's a VP at a bank in the Midwest, and she came to me wanting just to feel better overall, but also set herself up well because she was, uh, going to be the president of, uh, like her national nonprofit.

So she was constantly putting pressure on herself. This sort of like high achiever syndrome I call it, where you're being constantly pushed by achievement, internal pressure. And when I kind of uncovered for how this happened and, and my process starts, I take them back to childhood trauma and try to understand when this emanate.

And for her, it emanated because she was always criticized at home. Her mom said, oh, everything you do is half-assed, half-assed. Everything you do is just not good enough. And she never felt good enough because of the constant criticism. So she was gonna make up for that by being the perfect one, by being number one, like look, see, validating herself that she is enough.

Well, I love this idea of the an identity liberation movement, and we want our listeners to make sure that they check in on you as you continue to grow and expand in your business and in your movement, and let's bring more awakening to the whole planet. Thank you so much for being with me today, Deron and listeners.

We love feedback. Please let us know what you thought of today's episode. By joining our community, sharing your takeaways, asking questions, or submitting guest suggestions. You can weave your visionary thread into our fabric by opting in on our website@leadingvisionariespodcast.com or by interacting with us on social.

Thanks for tuning in, downloading and listening. Be sure to rate and review leading visionaries on Apple Podcasts and share with other people you know who can benefit from today's episode. Leading Visionaries is the premier podcast series for informing, activating, and inspiring the leading visionaries who are called to create conscious change and know that now is the best time to welcome wealth and cultivate a web of collaborative support.