1:1 Coaching + Systems for High Achievers.
Most coaches give you clarity and motivation. Most project managers give you systems and tools. I do both, because you need both.
The Sustainable Success Blueprint
For high-performers done feeling overwhelmed by their own success.
→ Mental clutter that never turns off
→ A calendar you don't control
→ Constant firefighting, zero progress
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Psychology
Clarity Coaching
Uncover what's really keeping you stuck — guilt, perfectionism, identity tied to constant work.
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Custom Build
Systems
Calendar architecture, Notion workspace, boundary scripts. Built for your specific role and life.
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It Sticks
Accountability
Tools without psychology don't last. You get both — plus accountability to make it hold.
Intro
Values
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Results-Driven, No Extra Fluff
Receive actionable value from the first call.
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Personalized Solutions
Sessions are tailored to your unique needs.
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Empowered Autonomy
I guide you to clarity, not tell you what to do.
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Strict Confidentiality
Our sessions are held in strict confidentiality.
Clients
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Success Coach
SKALE · Book & Ear Ventures
SKALE equips nutritionists and fitness coaches to package their services for high-ticket sales. I support their clients as a success coach while also contributing to product insights, streamlining onboarding processes, and managing operational workflows.
August 2024 - Present
Nutrition & Fitness
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Success Coach
Digital Car Dealer Skool · Carwico
Digital Car Dealer is Spain's top academy for entrepreneurship in car flipping. I coach students through the mental and strategic side of building their business, while also managing the community, content, and onboarding to support their progress end-to-end.
May 2025 – Present
Entrepreneurship
Impact
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134+
Clients
who reached their goals
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341+
Sessions
conducted with clients
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3+
Years
of experience in life coaching
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12+
Countries
where my clients are located
Testimonials
Oscar
I came into contact with Chiara about a year ago when I was having a lost period in my life, I had a lot of confused thoughts bouncing around in my head and couldn't get myself out of this. We started by having 2 conversations every week where slowly but surely we moved forward and gradually I saw a light in all the darkness and started to feel better. Chiara is an exceptionally good listener who truly understands human psychology on a deeper level. She doesn't judge anyone for anything and when she talks it's like an angel sent from heaven with a message. I recommend anyone who is stuck in life in different ways to try a few conversations with Chiara to see if she can open up new thought patterns and come up with messages that help. For me, she will always have a special place in my heart.
Jonas
Chiara is kind and understanding, and very good at listening, yet at the same time has great opinions that she knows how to express and are very insightful. She understands that problems can be complex and not black or white, and helps you navigate difficult situations and find solutions to problems. She has helped me recognise important truths that I wasn’t aware of, and I am so greatful for that! Whatever your problems are, or goals that you want to achieve, Chiara is a great partner by your side!
Gemma
Paloma has helped me in different moments and aspects of my life. I feel that with her, I can talk about anything without feeling judged, and she helps me delve deeper and understand many of the concerns I have. She helps me move from a cloud of thoughts to something more concrete, so I can truly find possible solutions and take actions to improve my life. Regarding my relationship, she also helped me identify the origin of many fears, needs, disagreements... to reflect on them from self-awareness, empathy, but also by setting boundaries and affirming my self-worth as a person. I wholeheartedly recommend her services because you will truly see results.
Latest episodes
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Paloma Chiara · Off the Clock
host
Friday Hobbies Podcast
James Carbonara (Friday Hobbies host) interviews Paloma Chiara (guest), one of his own coaches, in a conversation about who she is outside of work... her hobbies, interests, and the things that have nothing to do with business.
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The Risk Mindset
guest
Pablo Gallardo
Paloma Chiara (host) interviews Pablo Gallardo (guest), a mechanical engineer, who, through calculated risk-taking, went from being an unemployed graduate in Spain to head of project management in Germany.
BLOG
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Who Am I Without My Business?
Read blogYou built something out of nothing. Ten years in, or three, or one, and somewhere along the way the business stopped being a thing you run and became the thing that tells you who you are.
Then a slow month hits, or a client walks, or you finally take a real week off, and the question shows up uninvited: who am I without this? Not a dramatic breakdown. Just a quiet, sinking realization that you’re not sure how to answer.
Why Founders Fuse Identity With Work
Nobody builds a business planning to become it. It happens gradually, one all-nighter and one skipped weekend at a time, until the line between you and the company disappears.
Psychology Today has written about the risk of over-identifying with your job, and founders are especially exposed to it. An employee’s identity gets some protection from the org chart. Yours doesn’t. You’re the founder, the face, the decision-maker, and often the one who put up the money too. When the business struggles, it doesn’t feel like a business problem. It feels like a referendum on you.
Add the fact that most founders started the company to prove something, to themselves, to a parent, to an old boss, and the fusion makes sense. The business was never just a business. It was evidence.
The Cost of Letting the Business Become You
When your identity and your business are the same thing, every input into the business becomes an input into your self-worth. A good quarter and you feel like a genius. A bad one and you feel like a fraud, which is its own well-documented trap: the majority of CEOs report experiencing impostor feelings at some point, often worse in the years the business is actually doing fine.
There’s a quieter cost too. You stop being able to hear feedback about the business without hearing it as feedback about you. A client complaint stings for days. A missed target ruins your weekend. Decisions that should take ten minutes take three days, because the risk isn’t “will this work,” it’s “what does it mean about me if it doesn’t.”
This is also why so many founders can’t delegate, well past the point where the signs they’re overdue to hand things off are obvious to everyone but them. Handing off a task feels like handing off a piece of self. I see this constantly in the founders I coach: the resistance to delegation is rarely about trust in the other person. It’s about what letting go would mean for how they see themselves.
Check out the Free · Vision to Action Planner
More infoHow to Tell If This Is You
A few signs tend to show up together.
You describe yourself at parties by what your business does, and struggle to answer a follow-up question about anything else. Weekends off make you restless instead of rested, because rest without output feels like nothing. A slow sales month puts you in an actual low mood, out of proportion to what the numbers actually mean.
You’ve also probably noticed that your business can’t seem to run without your direct involvement in almost everything, which usually isn’t a staffing problem. It’s a sign that your sense of self is wired into being needed, so you’ve built a business that keeps needing you.
Separating Yourself From the Business, Without Losing Your Drive
The goal here isn’t to care less. It’s to make your worth less conditional on the business’s daily performance, so you can actually think clearly about it instead of white-knuckling every decision.
Name the parts of you the business didn’t create. Before the company, you were curious, funny, stubborn, good at specific things that have nothing to do with a P&L. Those traits didn’t disappear when you started the business, they got buried under it. Listing them is oddly hard for people this deep in, which tells you something.
Build something that doesn’t answer to a metric. A hobby you’re bad at on purpose. A friendship that has nothing to do with your industry. Anything that gives you a version of yourself the business can’t touch when a quarter goes sideways.
Get honest about what you’re actually avoiding. For a lot of founders, staying fused to the business is easier than facing a bigger question, like what they’d do or who they’d be without it. That avoidance often runs alongside a struggle to let go of control, because control over the business substitutes for control over an identity question that feels much scarier.
Practice being wrong about something small. Let a decision go the way someone else wants it. Notice that you survive it. That’s the kind of evidence your nervous system actually listens to.
What Changes When the Fusion Loosens
You start making better decisions, because they’re no longer decisions about your worth. You can hear a client’s complaint as information instead of an attack. You can take a real week off and come back sharper instead of resenting the time away.
The business usually gets stronger too, once it isn’t propping up your whole identity. It stops being the only thing holding you together. It goes back to being what it always should have been: something you built.
If this question has been sitting with you longer than you’d like to admit, get in touch and we’ll work through what’s underneath it, and what it would take to loosen the grip without losing what drives you.
Quiz: what’s blocking your success?
This quick quiz will help you uncover which mental or behavioural pattern might be holding you back from reaching your full potential. Identifying your specific blocker is the first step to overcoming it.
Read each question and choose the answer that best fits your situation.
No email or payment required to complete the quiz and receive your personalised results.
Once you know your main blocker, you’ll have clarity on what’s been holding you back. These patterns are not permanent traits, they are habitual ways of thinking and acting that can be changed with the right guidance and practice.
If you’re ready to overcome your specific blocker, email me to try a coaching session.
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How to Overcome Decision Fatigue as a Business Owner
Read blogBy 4pm, even picking a restaurant for dinner feels like too much. You’ve already decided what to build, who to hire, which client to prioritize, what to say in that email you kept rewriting. Another choice, even a small one, feels like one too many.
That’s a brain that’s already spent its stock of clear thinking, on decisions nobody else could make for you. Laziness has nothing to do with it.
What Decision Fatigue Actually Is
Decision fatigue is the drop in judgment quality that follows a long stretch of decision-making. The concept traces back to psychologist Roy Baumeister’s work on willpower, popularized in a New York Times Magazine piece that’s still cited a decade later. One of its most quoted findings: judges granted parole far more often early in the morning or right after a break, and far less often as the day wore on and their mental reserves ran down.
Every decision, big or small, seems to draw from the same limited tank. Choosing a logo color pulls from the same reserve as choosing whether to fire someone. Your brain doesn’t rank them by importance before it starts draining.
The APA frames it as a limited resource that depletes with use, similar to a muscle that tires from repeated effort. Once that resource runs low, people default to whatever’s easiest: the status quo, the first option, or no decision at all.
Why It Hits Business Owners Harder
An employee usually makes decisions inside a role someone else designed. A business owner makes decisions about the role, the product, the pricing, the hire, the client, the deadline, often before 10am.
You’re choosing without a manager to check with, a team to absorb the miss, or a script to fall back on. Every decision carries the full weight of the outcome, and there’s rarely anyone else positioned to catch it if it’s wrong.
I hit my own decision-fatigue spiral running multiple projects at once. Every small choice, which email to answer first, what to post, which client question to handle myself, ate into the same mental budget as the decisions that actually mattered. Building a single connected system, where daily decisions were already made in advance, pulled me out of it. Willpower never did.
Check out the Free · Vision to Action Planner
More infoThe Signs You’re Already In It
Decision fatigue rarely announces itself. It shows up sideways.
You keep re-reading the same email without sending it. You say yes to things you’d normally decline, because saying no requires a decision you don’t have the energy for. Small choices, what to eat, what to wear, start to feel disproportionately hard.
Some business owners swing the other way and get impulsive: quick, careless calls just to make the discomfort of choosing stop. Both patterns point to the same thing. The tank is empty, and the brain is looking for the fastest way out, not the best one.
This often overlaps with overthinking, where the exhaustion isn’t from making decisions but from replaying them. If a choice sits in your head for days after you’ve already made it, that’s the same resource being drained twice.
Why Willpower Isn’t the Answer
The instinct is to push through: more coffee, more discipline, a sharper morning routine. It rarely works for long, because the problem was never a lack of effort.
Chronic stress measurably changes how the brain handles decisions, and no amount of grit reverses that in the moment. Trying harder to decide well, when the resource behind deciding well is already gone, just spends what little is left.
The actual fix is designing a business that asks less of you in the first place, so there’s less to push through on the days your reserve runs out.
How to Build a Business That Makes Fewer Decisions For You
Set defaults for recurring choices. If you find yourself making the same call every week, write down the rule once and stop re-deciding it. A pricing floor, a response template, a standard turnaround time. Each one is a decision you never have to make again.
Batch similar decisions together. Reviewing 5 invoices back to back costs less than reviewing them scattered across a week, because your brain isn’t switching modes each time.
Decide what only you should decide. Most tasks that land on your desk don’t actually need you. Figuring out what to delegate first usually starts with noticing which decisions keep circling back to you out of habit, not necessity.
Protect your first hours. Make your hardest calls when your reserve is fullest, and push low-stakes admin to the afternoon, when your judgment is already thinner.
For a lot of owners, the real block underneath all of this is the belief that no one else can decide as well as they can, which is really a struggle to let go of control. Fewer decisions only sticks once that belief loosens.
What Changes When the Load Lifts
A business that doesn’t need your judgment on every small thing runs on its own most days. You show up for the decisions that actually require you, and skip the 30 that don’t.
Sleep improves. So does the quality of the decisions you do make, because you’re not making them from an empty tank. You still care as much about the business. You just spend your best judgment on what actually needs it, instead of burning it on 30 things that didn’t.
If decision fatigue has been running your days, get in touch to work through what’s actually driving it and build a system that carries some of that weight for you.
Quiz: what’s blocking your success?
This quick quiz will help you uncover which mental or behavioural pattern might be holding you back from reaching your full potential. Identifying your specific blocker is the first step to overcoming it.
Read each question and choose the answer that best fits your situation.
No email or payment required to complete the quiz and receive your personalised results.
Once you know your main blocker, you’ll have clarity on what’s been holding you back. These patterns are not permanent traits, they are habitual ways of thinking and acting that can be changed with the right guidance and practice.
If you’re ready to overcome your specific blocker, email me to try a coaching session.
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How to Set Boundaries Without Guilt
Read blogYou set a limit with someone you care about and then spend the next hour in your head wondering if you were too harsh. The guilt arrives fast. It tends to feel completely out of proportion to what actually happened.
What makes it disorienting is that the guilt doesn’t seem to care whether the limit was reasonable. It shows up anyway, and it shows up so reliably that a lot of people start treating it as a moral signal, something to act on rather than something to question.
Why Guilt Shows Up When You Draw a Line
Guilt fires when we believe we’ve caused harm or acted against our values. That’s its function: to keep us accountable to others.
But guilt also misfires. For people who grew up in environments where saying no felt unsafe, where approval seemed conditional on being agreeable, the signal gets overextended. Any act of self-prioritisation triggers it, whether or not anyone was actually harmed.
According to the APA, chronic patterns of self-suppression are linked to elevated anxiety and lowered psychological well-being over time. The cost isn’t immediately obvious, which is part of why the pattern tends to persist for years without being questioned.
Where This Pattern Comes From
The roots are almost always older than people expect.
In homes where the emotional climate was unpredictable, or where keeping the peace was genuinely necessary, saying no carried real risk. The child who became agreeable, easy to be around, and quietly self-erasing was doing something sensible given the circumstances. The strategy worked.
Trauma therapists call this the fawn response: when fighting or leaving a threat feels impossible, appeasement becomes the default. Pete Walker, who coined the term, describes it as a way of managing perceived danger through submission rather than resistance. As an adult, that early learning doesn’t disappear. It runs quietly in the background, tagging every act of self-assertion with a sense of threat.
Understanding how early abandonment experiences shape these adult patterns is often what makes the disproportionate guilt start to make sense.
Check out the Free · Vision to Action Planner
More infoThe Difference Between Disappointing Someone and Harming Them
Saying no to plans disappoints someone. Expressing a preference that differs from theirs creates friction. Neither of those things causes harm, even when the discomfort of conflict makes them feel that way.
Guilt fires in advance of evidence. Your nervous system is predicting a social threat based on past experience, not reporting on what’s happening right now. Harvard Health has documented how the brain learns to anticipate social danger from early relationships, and how those predictions can remain active long after the original context is gone.
This is why reasoning yourself out of the guilt rarely changes anything. The prediction is happening below the level of rational thought.
What a Limit Actually Is
A limit is a statement about your capacity, your values, your time. “I can’t take this on right now” is a limit. So is “I need some quiet time when I get home before we talk through the day.”
Many people experience saying no as a form of rejection, as if declining something signals withdrawn care for the other person. But a limit addresses what you can do, and says nothing about how much you value someone.
A study published in PMC found that higher people-pleasing tendencies were significantly associated with emotional exhaustion and lower psychological well-being, even when those behaviours looked caring on the surface. People who consistently override their own limits tend to accumulate quiet resentment. That resentment does more damage to a relationship over time than an honest no ever would.
How to Act on Your Limits When Guilt Is Present
Acting on a limit while guilt is present, and then watching it pass: that’s the actual work. The goal isn’t to feel nothing. It’s to stop letting the guilt make decisions.
Pause before responding. “Let me think about that and get back to you” is a complete sentence. That pause creates space for an actual answer to surface instead of the automatic agreeable one.
State the limit without over-explaining. “I can’t make it this weekend” is enough. Lengthy justifications signal that you believe you need permission, which tends to invite negotiation and gives the other person something to argue with.
Track what actually happens. Write down what you feared would follow the limit, then write down what actually did. Over time, that record starts to update your nervous system’s predictions. Learning to validate your own experience runs alongside this, and it matters: when your sense of whether a limit was reasonable stops depending on the other person’s reaction, the guilt loses much of its grip.
When Working with Someone Makes a Difference
Some of this shifts through awareness and deliberate practice. For patterns rooted in early experience, ones that have been running for a long time and feel more like a default than a habit, the change tends to take more than reading about it.
Part of what coaching around boundaries does is help you locate exactly where this pattern shows up in your specific life, understand the belief that’s underneath your guilt, and build small concrete steps to act differently in the situations that actually matter to you.
If this is something you’d like to work through, get in touch to book a session.
Quiz: what’s blocking your success?
This quick quiz will help you uncover which mental or behavioural pattern might be holding you back from reaching your full potential. Identifying your specific blocker is the first step to overcoming it.
Read each question and choose the answer that best fits your situation.
No email or payment required to complete the quiz and receive your personalised results.
Once you know your main blocker, you’ll have clarity on what’s been holding you back. These patterns are not permanent traits, they are habitual ways of thinking and acting that can be changed with the right guidance and practice.
If you’re ready to overcome your specific blocker, email me to try a coaching session.
Media & Press
The perfect time was last quarter.
Tell me where you're stuck. We'll build the systems around it.
Let's startFAQs
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Yes, life coaching can be highly effective for individuals seeking personal growth and positive change. Through personalized guidance, support, and accountability, life coaches empower clients to clarify their goals, overcome obstacles, and achieve meaningful results. However, success ultimately depends on the client's commitment, openness to change, and active participation in the coaching process. Read blog
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Yes, a life coach can help people with anxiety by providing guidance, support, and tools to manage and reduce anxiety symptoms. They can help clients develop coping strategies, implement stress-management techniques, and work towards building resilience and a more balanced lifestyle. However, it's important to note that severe or clinical anxiety requires the expertise of a mental health professional. Read blog
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Yes, life coaching can be beneficial for individuals experiencing depression by offering support, motivation, and strategies to improve their overall well-being. While they can provide guidance in areas such as goal-setting, mindset shifts, and self-care practices, it's important to note that severe or clinical depression should be addressed by a qualified mental health professional who can provide appropriate treatment and therapy. Read blog
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Yes, a life coach can help individuals improve their relationships by providing guidance, communication strategies, and tools to enhance connection and understanding. They can assist in identifying patterns, improving communication skills, and fostering healthier dynamics, ultimately supporting clients in building stronger and more fulfilling relationships. Read blog
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No, a life coach cannot act as a therapist as they have different roles and qualifications. While life coaches focus on personal development, goal-setting, and accountability, therapists are trained mental health professionals who provide diagnosis, treatment, and therapy for various mental health conditions. It's essential to seek the appropriate professional based on your specific needs. Read blog
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While it is possible to engage in self-coaching practices and personal development, having an external life coach can provide valuable perspective, accountability, and support. A life coach offers an objective viewpoint, specialized expertise, and guidance that can enhance the effectiveness and depth of the coaching process, facilitating greater personal growth and transformation. Read blog
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A life coach can provide personalized guidance, support, and accountability to help you clarify your goals, overcome obstacles, and reach your full potential. They can assist in identifying limiting beliefs, creating action plans, and fostering personal growth in various areas of your life. Ultimately, a life coach can empower you to make positive changes, gain clarity, and achieve meaningful results. Read blog
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No, a life coach does not typically provide specific guidance or expertise in weight loss. While they can offer support in setting goals and maintaining accountability, for weight loss purposes, it is generally more effective to consult with a registered dietitian, nutritionist, or fitness professional who can provide specialized guidance and expertise in nutrition, exercise, and weight management. Read blog
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Yes, a life coach can help individuals improve their confidence by offering guidance, tools, and techniques to develop self-belief, overcome self-doubt, and cultivate a positive mindset. Through personalized strategies, support, and accountability, a life coach can empower individuals to build and sustain confidence in various areas of their lives, leading to personal growth and greater success. Read blog
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Life coaching works by establishing a collaborative partnership between the coach and the client. The coach guides the client through a process of self-discovery, goal-setting, and action planning. Through active listening, powerful questioning, and providing support and accountability, the coach helps the client unlock their potential, overcome obstacles, and achieve desired outcomes. Read blog
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You should consider getting a life coach when you feel stuck, lack clarity, or desire to make positive changes in your life. A life coach can be beneficial if you want support in achieving goals, improving relationships, navigating career transitions, or enhancing personal development. It's a valuable resource for those seeking guidance, accountability, and a fresh perspective on their journey towards personal growth and fulfillment. Read blog
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The duration of life coaching varies depending on individual needs and goals. It can range from a few weeks to several months, with regular sessions typically conducted weekly or bi-weekly. The length of the coaching relationship is determined collaboratively between the client and the coach, based on the progress made and the desired outcomes. Read blog
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You can start by conducting a search on Google. Simply enter relevant keywords such as "life coach" or "personal development coach" along with your location to find local options. Explore their websites, read client testimonials, and review their credentials to ensure they align with your needs and values. Additionally, online coaching directories and platforms can provide a curated list of certified coaches with detailed profiles, making it easier to find a suitable match for your coaching journey. Read blog
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To make the most of working with a life coach, it's important to have a clear understanding of your goals and objectives. Communicate openly and honestly with your coach, sharing your challenges, aspirations, and progress. Take an active role in the coaching process by implementing recommended strategies and holding yourself accountable for taking necessary actions towards personal growth and desired outcomes. Read blog
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Anyone can benefit from working with a life coach, especially those who feel stuck, lack clarity, or desire positive change in their lives. Individuals seeking support in achieving goals, improving relationships, navigating career transitions, or enhancing personal development can greatly benefit from the guidance, accountability, and fresh perspective that a life coach provides. Read blog
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Life coaching is effective because it offers personalized guidance and support tailored to individual needs. Coaches help clients gain clarity, set meaningful goals, and develop actionable plans. The accountability, motivation, and empowerment provided by a life coach contribute to improved self-awareness, confidence, and ultimately, the achievement of desired results. Read blog
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While both a life coach and a mentor provide guidance and support, there are key differences. A life coach focuses on personal growth, goal-setting, and accountability, offering structured sessions and strategies. A mentor, on the other hand, shares their expertise and experiences to provide industry-specific guidance and advice. Read blog
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A lifestyle coach and a life coach share similarities but have different focuses. A lifestyle coach primarily addresses specific areas of a person's lifestyle, such as health, fitness, or relationships. A life coach takes a broader approach, addressing various aspects of a person's life, including personal growth, career, relationships, and overall well-being. Read blog
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Deciding between seeing a therapist or a life coach depends on your specific needs. A therapist is appropriate when dealing with mental health concerns or clinical diagnoses, while a life coach is beneficial for personal development, goal-setting, and achieving desired outcomes. It's important to assess your situation, consider the level of support required, and choose the appropriate professional accordingly. Read blog
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A life coach can be instrumental in helping with career development and transitions. They can assist in clarifying goals, developing strategies, and providing accountability and support throughout the process. A life coach can help you gain clarity, overcome obstacles, and make meaningful progress towards a fulfilling and successful career. Read blog