Meet Susan Zytnik-Künzler, the Founder of A-Squared LAMP Groups that bring coaching, training, consulting, and systems to entrepreneurs, teams, startups, and growing organizations.
A Certified Career Coach, a Professional Development Mentor, an Organizational Consultant for OD design/development/detox, and the Founder of A-Squared LAMP Groups, Susan Zytnik-Künzler is many things, but whatever she does, helping people live their potential and realize their dreams is always her goal.
Born in Vietnam, Susan has diverse memories of her childhood where she had to move every eight months or two years. At the age of thirteen, she left home and moved to a group home. By the time she was seventeen years old, she had her own apartment. Due to a young pregnancy, Susan had to adopt out her child who she met again thirty years later. She is a high school graduate and has attended college.
Ms. Zytnik-Künzler had to work for money, but she was easily bored with such jobs. She says, “When you don’t know WHAT you don’t know about finding a career you love, you don’t even know the right questions to ask, let alone the right resources to discover IT.” She got married, had a son who is now grown, started and ran a few small businesses as a stay-at-home mom, ran many teams and organizations as a volunteer, and consulted and helped others without asking for anything in return. Helping others is what gave her satisfaction, and when she saw that there were patterns of self-sabotage, missed targets, confidence-killing habits, and energy mismanagement in people, she started her heart and vision non-profit organization to help them. She elaborates, “I started my NPO to help others in the areas where they needed guidance. I hoped to mitigate wasted time trying to learn, over-invest, and waste funds on non-impactful things. My motivation was seeing so many women with granular entrepreneurial talent getting sucked into “less-than” roles and marketing schemes where they weren’t realizing real benefits.”
Ms. Zytnik-Künzler’s organization is a US-based charity providing development to empower people, companies, and organizations by providing professional services like coaching, training, and consulting system resources, and interactive opportunities for people to work and grow together. Their target opportunities are to help challenged or unemployed and at-risk workers, misemployed (are in wrong jobs/fields), under-employed, and desirous to start a new company or group. They seek to make high-end services, systems, and help accessible to all through flat-fee memberships with built-in benefits, shared-cost projects or systems access, and donor-funded partner programs.
Talking about her idea of addressing issues holistically with an eye for multi-disciplinary integration of practices, generosity, and interaction with others, Susan says, “I love what I do to make others independent and free. I always work to move myself out of a role gradually and in a natural manner, so that the people and organizations I work with build skills that allow them to make good decisions on their own. I love maintaining relationships with them to see how it plays out – either with another engagement for their next level of growth, or as they develop into a networked resource or partner later.”
Not understanding how to navigate or communicate past the management bureaucracy, policies, and jargon that took advantage of her as a woman was the greatest hurdle in Ms. Zytnik-Künzler’s career. This led to her working harder and longer than anyone for the least amount of pay or benefits. She realized that she was left without any negotiation or power over her skill set, so she decided to change it for others and help those out in similar situations.
Today, Susan’s work is well-recognized and valued. She says, “We have had multiple invitations, opportunities, and temporary partnerships with prestigious global organizations where we have been able to share what we do and how we do it in their communities.” Her organization is currently developing partner-hosts for their women’s career empowerment program, a creative entrepreneur program for disabled persons, and a ‘how-to program’ to help organizations start their own effective internal leadership development program(s).
Susan has learned a lot over time, and she shares her success mantra with people who want to make ‘IT’ happen. She says, “You are not alone, so don’t try to do it alone…or fast. Go slower, adjust your expectations, and enjoy the journey. Jealousy, envy, and comparison are all responses to feelings of inadequacy and disempowerment. Learning the skills to reframe how you handle those feelings can change your response and impact into something that actually pushes you forward (without negative aggression) right into your success. It empowers you to be who you are, do what you do, and share what you can with freedom and peace.”