Marie Keutler spent years training as a psychotherapist before she noticed the gap that would eventually become Baseline. Clients who understood their stress perfectly and still couldn't find their way back to calm. Yoga training, breathwork, somatic practice, and her own published research on self-compassion all fed into the same realisation, that the body needed to be part of the work, not just the mind. In this interview, Marie talks about why nervous system regulation has become one of the most important conversations in mental health right now, the practical tools that can shift an overwhelmed or shut-down body in minutes, and the lesson building Baseline taught her about resilience, that it was never about pushing through in the first place. Marie Keutler, Psychotherapist & Somatic Therapist, Yoga & Breathwork Teacher, Founder & CEO of Baseline What first drew you to combine psychotherapy with somatic practices, breathwork, and nervous system work? It started with a kind of professional restlessness. Early in my training, I wanted to understand people from the inside out, what drove them, what held them back, why we do the things we do even when we know better. But the more I learned, the more disconnected I felt in my own life. I knew so much, and somehow that made it harder, not easier, to actually feel calm, present, and content. The shift came from places that had nothing to do with my training on paper. A yoga teacher training. A breathwork training. Moments away from the noise where I dropped into a state I'd only ever read about, quiet, alive, present without performing it. Living fully. I remember thinking, this is what baseline actually feels like. Is this what life is supposed to feel like? It made me quite sad, realising how far away from it I'd been living. "Is this what life is supposed to feel like?" That question wouldn't leave me alone. What's the point if we only get to feel like this a few moments a year, especially once I realised I hadn't actually felt that state in years? So I went deeper into the body-based work, somatics, movement, breath, nervous system science, and found a way back that didn't depend on a retreat or a holiday. Psychotherapy gave me the why. The somatic work gave me the how. What are you noticing in clients that convinced you the body needs to be part of the healing process? The moment I trust most in a session isn't when a client finally puts something into words. It's the moment after, when something in their body changes. Shoulders drop. Breath shifts. Their eyes go softer. Someone who's been articulate about their pain for months, sometimes years, suddenly feels it move through them instead of just describing it. I had a client tell me it felt like she'd gained a superpower. She was getting more done, sleeping better, her relationships had shifted, and nothing about her circumstances had actually changed. What changed was her capacity to regulate, not just understand what was happening to her. I've seen this pattern over and over. People can talk about their stress with total insight and still be stuck inside it. The body doesn't update on insight alone, it updates on repetition, on small consistent signals of safety. That's the part talk therapy alone often can't reach, and it doesn't take months. Sometimes it takes minutes, with the right tool, repeated enough for the system to relearn. Why do you think nervous system regulation has become such an important conversation in mental health today? I think we've collectively hit a wall with purely cognitive approaches. For years, the message was understand yourself and you'll feel better, journal it, reframe it, talk it through. That's valuable, but a lot of people did all of that and still felt wired, flat, or one notification away from being overwhelmed. At the same time, the science caught up. HRV tracking and wearables have put words like stress score and recovery into everyday language, and that's made people aware their body is holding information their mind doesn't have access to. There's also the simple reality of constant low-grade activation, notifications, and an always-on culture that never properly resolves. Our nervous systems are responding to a pace of life they weren't built for. So the conversation has shifted from how do I think differently about my stress to how do I actually help my body come down from it. That's a more honest, more useful question, and it's why nervous system regulation has stopped being a niche therapy term and become something people are genuinely curious about. Where do you see traditional wellbeing approaches falling short when it comes to stress and burnout? Most traditional wellbeing tools are still fundamentally top-down. Journaling, mindset work, even a lot of meditation apps, ask you to think your way into a calmer state. That works for some people, some of the time. But if you're properly activated, if your nervous system is already in a stress response, your thinking brain isn't always the part that's available to you. I also think a lot of wellness culture has quietly become another performance. Streaks, badges, daily targets, guilt if you miss a day. That's the opposite of what a dysregulated nervous system needs. It needs permission, not pressure. Then there's the gap between knowing and doing. Most of my clients already know they're stressed, they know meditation exists, they know they should sleep more and slow down. Knowing has never been the missing piece. What's missing is something simple, fast, and body-first enough to actually use in the moment it's needed, not at the end of a long day when the moment has already passed. What inspired you to create Baseline, and what gap were you hoping to fill outside the therapy room? I kept seeing the same gap in my therapy room. Clients could understand their stress beautifully, talk about it, name their patterns, and intellectualise it from every angle. But in the actual moment, mid meeting, mid meltdown, mid 2 am spiral, they couldn't access calm. Insight didn't translate into a felt shift fast enough to matter. I built Baseline because therapy happens once a week for fifty minutes, and dysregulation happens constantly, in the small ordinary moments of an ordinary day. I wanted something that could sit in that gap, body-first, one to three minutes, that meets you exactly where you are, wired, flat, overwhelmed, and gives your nervous system a real, physiological reason to come back to baseline. There's also something more personal behind it. I could only ever see so many clients, and my waitlist kept growing. One of my biggest missions now is making this kind of regulation accessible to far more people than I could ever reach one-on-one. Regulation is contagious too, in the best way. A manager who finds their way back to baseline changes their whole team, with knock-on effects at home, with family, with friends. Moments at baseline shouldn't only be for people who can afford therapy. Often the people who need it most have the least time to take care of themselves, which is exactly what the three minutes is for. The aim was never to replace therapy. It was to give people access to regulation outside of it too, in the moments therapy can't reach, because life doesn't pause for an appointment. When someone feels overwhelmed or shut down, what is one simple body-based practice that can help them reconnect with themselves? It depends, honestly, we're all different, and it depends on which state you're actually in. If you're overwhelmed and wired, a sigh breath or a slow exhale through pursed lips can help release some of that charge. If you're shut down and flat, you need the opposite, a bit of gentle activation. Letting your eyes move around the room, or a few seconds of shaking out your hands and arms, can bring you back into your body before you're anywhere near ready to relax. The most important thing is meeting the body where it is, not forcing it into a calmer state before it's ready. When I'm genuinely stressed, the last thing I want to do is close my eyes and take a deep breath. I need to release first, close the stress cycle, before my body can settle. What I love about all of these is there's nothing to believe in or understand first. You don't need to know the science for it to start working. That's the whole premise behind Baseline too, body-first tools that meet you in whatever state you're actually in, not the state you think you should be in. After leading retreats around the world, what shifts do people often experience when they step away from the pace of everyday life? What I notice most is how quickly people drop into a state they didn't realise they'd lost access to. Away from notifications, the next task, and performing being okay, something in people visibly softens, usually within the first day. Shoulders come down. Conversations slow down. People sleep properly, often for the first time in months. But the real shift isn't the calm itself, it's what people learn about how they got so far from it without noticing. A lot of people arrive saying they're fine, just tired, and by day two realise they've been running on empty for a long time and calling it normal. What I love watching most is how much more themselves people become, like the layers of conditioning and chronic stress had numbed them without them realising, and underneath it, their actual character comes back. People laugh more, they're more present, more connected to what they actually want and need, not because we've solved their life for them but because they've reconnected with themselves enough to actually listen. People often expect retreats to be serious, and they're always a little surprised by how much lighter they leave. What I care about most is what happens after. A retreat that only works on a beach isn't actually useful, so we spend real time bringing even a small piece of that state back into an ordinary Tuesday, because that's where people actually live. The goal was never the escape, it's proof the calm was there inside them all along. Mostly, people just need that felt sense, their nervous system relearning that it's safe to trust it. It's such an honour to do this work. Your work often emphasizes curiosity over judgment, how can that mindset change the way we relate to ourselves during difficult seasons? Judgment keeps you stuck in the story of what's wrong with you. Curiosity gets you closer to what's actually happening, which is the only place change can start from. This isn't just a nice idea to me, it's something I researched and lived. I conducted and published research that looked at self-compassion as a buffer between perfectionism and wellbeing, and the pattern was clear, the people who could meet their own struggling with curiosity rather than criticism recovered faster and more fully than the people who tried to think their way out of it through self-judgment. In practice, say you've just snapped at someone, instead of asking what's wrong with me, you ask what was my body holding before that happened. It's a small shift, but it changes your nervous system's experience of the moment. Judgment puts you into a kind of internal threat state, curiosity signals enough safety to actually look at what's going on. Looking is the first step toward anything changing. We don't need to love everything about how we react. Even moving from judgment to just tolerating it is enough to shift something. Our mind and body have good intentions, they're not the enemy, they just sometimes have outdated ways of responding. As simple as it sounds, we can't hate ourselves into change. Leaning in with compassion and curiosity creates space for a shift. Judgment does the opposite. If there is one thing you would like people to understand about resilience, what would it be? That resilience was never about pushing through, even though that's how most of us were taught to think about it. The version I believe in now is about how quickly and how often you can return to baseline after life knocks you off it, not about how much you can withstand before you need to. It's a balancing act, a kind of training, finding a baseline, losing it, finding it again. Life is messy and not perfect, this was never about forcing one state, it's about moving with it and having a way back. I see this in my own life. I now work more than I ever have, and I'm building something genuinely demanding, but it comes from a completely different place than it used to. Less forcing, more clarity. Better fuel, not just more effort. The difference isn't that less is happening, it's that my nervous system has learned how to recover in the gaps instead of staying activated through all of it. If I could change one thing about how people think about resilience, it would be this, it's not a fixed trait some people have and others don't. It's a skill your body can practice and get better at, in minutes, not months, with the right, repeatable signal often enough. It's about having the capacity to live fully, and the tools to come back to that capacity when life takes over. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and website for more info! Read more from Marie Keutler

Industrial pneumatic power systems are crucial for the seamless operation of manufacturing plants, automotive production lines, and a variety of other industrial environments. When compressed air is at the heart of your operations, even a minor interruption can lead to production delays, increased costs, and safety concerns. How can facilities ensure that these vital systems run reliably not just today, but for years to come? Building the Foundation: System Assessment and Proactive Support Reliable performance of pneumatic systems begins with a comprehensive assessment and a proactive maintenance strategy. Facilities that invest in an initial audit of their compressed air systems can uncover inefficiencies, leaks, and outdated components before they escalate into larger issues. Engaging with technical support services like Fluid Aire Dynamics  helps identify areas of potential failure early, enabling facility managers to implement targeted improvements. This foundational step ensures that maintenance routines are tailored to the actual needs of the system, rather than relying on generic schedules. Preventive Maintenance: The Key to Longevity Preventive maintenance is the cornerstone of long-term reliability for industrial pneumatic power systems. This approach focuses on scheduled inspections, filter replacements, lubrication, and testing of safety controls. By adhering to a strict maintenance calendar, facilities can drastically reduce unexpected breakdowns and extend the life of critical components. A well-structured preventive maintenance checklist for pneumatic systems should include: Daily checks for abnormal noises and vibrations Weekly monitoring of pressure and temperature readings Monthly inspection of hoses, seals, and fittings for leaks Quarterly testing of safety relief valves and control logic Annual comprehensive system audits Such routines ensure that small issues are caught and resolved quickly, preventing them from evolving into costly downtime events. Data-Driven Decision-Making and Remote Monitoring Advancements in industrial IoT technologies now allow facilities to monitor their pneumatic systems in real time. Sensors track critical operating metrics, such as pressure, temperature, dew point, and power consumption. This data is invaluable for predictive maintenance—enabling teams to anticipate failures based on actual performance trends rather than purely on elapsed time. By integrating data-driven insights into their management strategies, facilities can optimize energy usage, reduce waste, and improve overall equipment effectiveness. In the middle of these efforts, seeking out a hands-on approach to repair air compressors  can bridge gaps in in-house expertise, especially when remote diagnostics indicate emerging mechanical or electrical issues. Training and Empowerment of Technical Teams No management strategy for pneumatic system reliability is complete without ongoing training of technical staff. As systems become more complex and automation increases, maintenance teams must stay current with the latest troubleshooting techniques, safety protocols, and component upgrades. Facilities that prioritize staff development see improvements in both reaction time and problem resolution. Empowered teams can quickly identify root causes, respond effectively to alarms, and make informed decisions about repairs or replacements. This not only minimizes downtime but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement. Spare Parts Management and Supply Chain Resilience A robust spare parts strategy is essential for minimizing extended outages. Keeping an organized inventory of high-wear items—such as filters, seals, and actuators—ensures that critical repairs can be completed without delay. It is also important to establish strong relationships with reliable suppliers who can deliver specialized components at short notice. For operations in regions with harsh climates, such as those relying on a Detroit air compressor , contingency planning becomes even more critical. Seasonal temperature swings and humidity can accelerate wear and affect system performance, making it imperative to have the right parts and expertise on hand year-round. Continuous Improvement Through Root Cause Analysis When failures do occur, a structured root cause analysis helps prevent recurrence. Instead of merely replacing failed parts, technical teams should document incidents, examine contributing factors, and implement corrective actions at the system level. This continuous improvement mindset not only enhances reliability but also drives down operating costs over time. Pairing root cause analysis with ongoing performance monitoring enables facilities to adapt their maintenance strategies as operational demands evolve. It also provides valuable feedback to equipment manufacturers and service providers, leading to better system designs and support offerings in the future. Conclusion Sustaining the long-term reliability of industrial pneumatic power systems requires a comprehensive, proactive approach. By investing in regular assessments, preventive maintenance, real-time monitoring, staff training, and robust spare parts management, facilities can reduce downtime, control costs, and maintain productivity. Leveraging expert support and continuous improvement methods ensures these systems remain dependable, even as technology and operational challenges evolve. Ultimately, the combination of technical insight and strategic planning lays the groundwork for facilities to operate at peak capacity for years to come.

Written by Rob James Brooke, Transformation Coach, Founder of Lionheart Transformation Academy Rob Brooke is a Rapid Transformational Therapist and founder of Lionheart Transformation Academy, known for helping men release deep-rooted trauma, rewire limiting beliefs, and step into powerful, self-led lives through subconscious transformation. Earlier this week, I found myself unexpectedly moved to tears while watching footage of football fans gathered in the United States. It wasn't the goals that touched me. It wasn't the rivalries, the competition, or even the game itself. It was humanity. I watched men of all ages, races, cultures, and nationalities singing together, embracing strangers, dancing in the streets, and celebrating something profoundly simple: the joy of being alive, connected, and fully present with one another. For a few fleeting moments, there was no posturing, no proving, and no carefully constructed image of what a man is supposed to be. There was simply belonging. As I watched, I realised why it affected me so deeply. As someone who spent years immersed in bodybuilding, carrying a muscular physique, a shaved head, and standing over six feet tall, I became familiar with assumptions. People often perceived me as intimidating, dominant, or aggressive before I had spoken a single word. The truth was something entirely different. Beneath that exterior was someone highly sensitive, deeply empathetic, and emotionally aware. I have always felt more comfortable holding space for another person's pain than competing for status. I have cried at films, become emotional witnessing acts of kindness, and found myself profoundly moved by moments where human beings simply allow themselves to be joyful. Perhaps that scene resonated because I understand what it feels like to hide softer parts of yourself. I know what it feels like to study yourself before entering a room, to monitor your voice, adjust your mannerisms, and wonder whether your sensitivity will be welcomed. As a gay man growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, there were many unspoken messages about masculinity. Boys were expected to be tough, strong, unemotional, confident, and certain. Deviating from that image often came with a cost. For many LGBTQ+ people, authenticity begins with adaptation. We become experts at reading environments, fitting in, and becoming versions of ourselves that feel safer for other people. Yet healing eventually asks a different question: Who are you when you no longer need to perform? Who are you when you stop trying to earn belonging? Who are you when you no longer need armour? As a Rapid Transformational Therapist working with men navigating anxiety, shame, self-sabotage, addiction, visibility struggles, and low self-worth, I have come to understand something profoundly important: most men are not broken, they are protected. The perfectionist was often a child desperately seeking approval. The overachiever may have learned that success was the only route to love. The businessman who cannot switch off may believe his worth depends upon productivity. The man drinking too much every weekend may simply be longing for permission to rest. Children become extraordinarily intelligent at surviving environments that adults later spend decades trying to heal from. What once protected us can eventually become a prison. For generations, men inherited an unwritten script. Strength meant stoicism. Leadership meant control. Sensitivity was a weakness. Vulnerability was dangerous. Receiving support was dependent. Emotional restraint was admirable. Many men became experts at surviving under these conditions. They built businesses, transformed their physiques, accumulated wealth, provided for families, and hid behind humour, perfectionism, or endless self-improvement. Many looked successful. Few felt truly safe. I do not believe we are witnessing a crisis of masculinity. I believe we are witnessing the dismantling of an outdated model. In its place, something rather extraordinary is emerging. I call him the Gentle Man. Not because he lacks strength, but because he has discovered where strength truly lives. The Gentle Man is no longer afraid of his tenderness. He understands that kindness is not the absence of power but evidence of it. He can hold boundaries without aggression, lead without domination, protect without possession, and succeed without sacrificing his humanity. He celebrates difference, welcomes others, and has no desire to diminish another person's light in order to shine himself. He knows that the strongest person in the room is often the one who makes everyone else feel safe enough to be themselves. As Pride Month invites us to celebrate authenticity, courage, and self-expression, perhaps there is an opportunity to expand our understanding of masculinity itself. Maybe masculinity was never supposed to be rigid. Maybe strength was never supposed to require emotional disconnection. Maybe men were never intended to spend their lives proving they deserve love. Perhaps the future belongs to integrated men: men who are ambitious and compassionate, grounded and intuitive, disciplined and emotionally available, protective and nurturing. That is what I witnessed watching those football fans. Not weakness. Not sentimentality. Not men abandoning masculinity. I witnessed safety. I witnessed a connection. I witnessed men allowing themselves, however briefly, to stop performing. Because beneath every label, every identity, every expectation, and every role we inherit, I believe most human beings are longing for the same thing: to be accepted, to be understood, to be celebrated, and to feel safe enough to simply be. Perhaps the rise of the Gentle Man is not a movement against masculinity at all. Perhaps it is a remembering. A return. An awakening. Because in a world that has spent centuries teaching men to armour themselves against life, perhaps the most courageous thing a man can do is leave his heart open and perhaps that is exactly the kind of man the world needs now. "When you free your mind, everything changes," – Rob Brooke Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Rob James Brooke Rob James Brooke, Transformation Coach, Founder of Lionheart Transformation Academy Rob Brooke is the founder of Lionheart Transformation Academy and a Rapid Transformational Therapist redefining how men heal, lead, and live. After overcoming years of anxiety, addiction, and self-sabotage, he now helps others break free from trauma and reprogram the beliefs that keep them stuck. His work goes beyond mindset, guiding men into a state of calm, clarity, and inner power through deep subconscious transformation. At the heart of his mission is a simple truth: when you free the mind, you change everything.

Patrick Bradford is a business consultant, writer, and founder of Patrick Bradford Consulting and PlanPro Institute, where he helps entrepreneurs build better businesses through strategic planning, operational structure, and sustainable growth. After starting his first venture at 13 and later building a leadership career in hospitality, Bradford brings a practical view of business growth, one shaped by failed ventures, large-scale operations, and firsthand experience with the pressures small business owners face. In this exclusive interview, he shares why clarity is the starting point for growth, how business planning differs from a static business plan, and what owners should examine before scaling too quickly. Patrick Bradford, Business Consultant What inspired you to move from a leadership career in hospitality into helping business owners build and grow their companies? When I was a kid, I overheard my mom and dad several times debating about money. I am not sure if this was the main trigger. I am certain I had an entrepreneur in me since I was a kid, self-inspired. I have never been happy with the concept of caps and limited income. I always wanted to design my own. At the age of 13, I opened my first venture selling corn on the cob. At the age of 19, I started my first fast-food diner, which lasted four months. At the age of 28, I opened another fast-food diner. My first two ventures failed. As soon as the third one started to succeed, I had to shut it down for personal reasons. This is when I traveled for the first time, leaving my birth country, Lebanon. I got introduced to large-scale operations and real business management. I learned to see everything through the lens of a well-organized chef. Fast forward to 2008, when I arrived in Mississauga, Canada, I decided to invest in what I do best: helping entrepreneurs. The idea was not fully formed, so I incorporated Patrick Bradford Consulting in the Province of Ontario under the legal name Solutions Hospitality Ltd. In 2011, I got inspired by Robert Kiyosaki and joined his informal financial education academy, Rich Dad Education, which changed my life 360 degrees. You often say that growth starts with clarity; what does clarity look like in a business that is ready to scale? Absolutely, yes. How could a boat reach the desired destination without a good compass in its navigation system, the right team, and the right plan? Without clarity, it would definitely get lost on the horizon. When we start working with business owners, we begin with an assessment to understand their current situation as well as their goals, then build a clear plan that includes dates, tasks, profit estimates, and responsible people to implement it. We use organizational psychology in our practices to assess every person involved and make sure we are helping the business owner assign the right people together in a smart way so that the teams perform dynamically together and in harmony. This practice also helps the business owner understand their strengths and areas for development, so they can figure out where to invest their energy between doing and delegating. Scaling requires the right platforms, tools, business model, strategic partnerships, smart capital, a well-trained team, aligned departments, and a crystal-clear, written-in-stone mission statement that the company lives by. The tool hub we created is the PlanPro Institute, our online business plan academy, which is available to support business owners and their management teams as they navigate business growth. We are making sure it is affordable, practical, and accessible worldwide. Why do so many business owners treat a business plan as a one-time document instead of a tool for decision-making? It is either that they wrote the wrong plan, or they are tired of obstacles and find themselves alone. They may have discovered that their energy does not align with the business plan's implementation speed, or maybe they feel demotivated or disappointed with their partners due to a lack of alignment. Or maybe they simply do not know that a business plan has to be updated regularly and used as a roadmap for the future, explaining how their aspirations are going to be attained and how their mission statement is going to be fulfilled. It appears to me that, in many cases, entrepreneurs and business owners confuse a business plan with business planning. Here is a metaphor I love using, especially since I am a weekend biker. Let's say I design and build a beautiful motorcycle, which is now sitting in my garage. That is a business plan. Now, once I start riding the motorcycle on the road and testing its performance against the baseline and the desired outcome, that becomes business planning. The motorcycle itself represents the business plan. Riding it, monitoring its performance, making adjustments, and ensuring it reaches its destination represent the ongoing process of business planning. After working with businesses across different countries, what challenge seems to be universal among small business owners? I noticed that many business owners aspire to increase their client base and improve their revenue. They work on it, give it the most attention, and focus on it the most. When the revenue starts increasing and they begin onboarding new clients, they often feel overwhelmed. They stop enjoying their day-to-day business, and this happens because they don't have a ready structure or the capacity to accommodate the additional business within a smooth system. That is one undeniable global problem I see among micro and small businesses. The other problem I see is that most entrepreneurs start a business because they are really good at doing something technically, but they ignore the business side for a long time. For example, a lawyer can be a really, really good lawyer, but when their business starts growing, they open an office, bring in more lawyers to help them, and then feel overwhelmed managing the office. Although they are really good lawyers, they may be unable to manage human resources, unsure how to do marketing, and unsure how to establish proper procedures for payments and accounts receivable. They often lack the financial literacy needed to project and grow their business. That is the challenge between being a great technical person and being a great entrepreneur. What are business owners getting wrong when they focus on growth before validating their ideas through a feasibility study? They usually try to grow or expand a business before first confirming that the business idea is actually viable and profitable. They skip the financial calculations in terms of profit projections. They focus on developing the product before validating the need in the market or before making sure there is enough market demand for their entry. In some cases, they come up with solutions that are available or easy to duplicate. This creates tremendous competition and makes strategic partnerships harder to secure because professionals do not want to invest in a business that can be easily competed against. I always say that just because an idea is cool does not mean it is profitable. In other words, they skip the challenging, hard part of the work and dive into the exciting part, which is production, launching, and introducing the product or service to the market. A feasibility study helps entrepreneurs validate assumptions, estimate profitability, identify risks, evaluate competition, and determine whether there is enough demand before investing significant time, money, and energy. Without that validation, growth looks like scaling a weak business model faster. If a business owner feels stuck despite working hard, where should they look first for the real problem? Inside ourselves, inside oneself. Nowhere else should we be looking. I am referring to business owners who run small and micro businesses with fewer than 30 employees. I am saying look within oneself because it is about aligning our energy with our pace of growth, pace of work, execution, and goals. I would start by reviewing what my day-to-day life looks like in the office or at work. Am I taking on tasks that are outside my area of expertise, outside my comfort zone, and outside what I do best? Am I assigning the right tasks to the right people? Am I taking on the right responsibilities and assigning the right responsibilities to my team members? This is what I should be looking at first. Second, I would look at business priorities. What decisions have the highest long-term impact? Those are the decisions I would focus on the most. It is against my belief, philosophy, and expertise that a CEO, business owner, or founder should be stuck dealing with day-to-day emergencies. If they do, they will not be able to focus on long-term decisions and strategy, nor prepare for long-term growth. My secret tip is this: focus on what is important but not urgent. Delegate what is urgent. Third, and most importantly, use organizational psychology. Take online assessments and learn about your strengths and weaknesses in order to determine what you should do yourself and what you should delegate. What is one practical change a small business can make this month to create more structure and momentum? To create structure, stress-test your capacity. Do some calculations, financial engineering, operational engineering, or process engineering, and determine how much additional business your company would be able to accommodate if, today or tomorrow, your client base were multiplied by two. Creating momentum means enjoying what we do. I think I answered this in the previous question. It means finding a way to work over the long term without running into burnout. It means choosing the right number of hours, the right pace, delegating to the right team, and making sure every team member is doing the right job. The right person in the right place. Momentum is long-term, and momentum is consistency. For consistency to take place over the long term, the team must have ownership and be well-trained. All departments should be aligned and able to communicate effectively, whether the business owner is present or on vacation. I would stress-test this as well. I would advise the business owner to go on vacation for a month, turn off their phone, and see what happens. At PlanPro Institute, our online business plan academy, we help train department heads and managers to better support business owners in strategy and management. This is one practical solution business owners can use to create more structure and stronger systems. How has your own definition of business success changed since writing Blueprint for Business Success? Knowledge is useful only when we apply it in the market and in real life. Blueprint for Business Success was always a gateway for me to express and share what I know while enjoying my day-to-day work because I love writing. I think I inherited this from my dad. He was a really, really good writer and an officer in the army. He wrote many SOPs for the administration of the army, and I used to see him writing all the time when I was a kid. Writing about business gives me a deep sense of pleasure. What I discovered along the way is that I was onto something bigger than myself. It was no longer just about sharing knowledge. It became about people taking advantage of that knowledge, capitalizing on it, and finding solutions through it. I have had people reach out to me asking if they could use my articles to train their AI agents, and I was happy to hear that. Blueprint for Business Success became a way to introduce myself to the world. Before writing articles, I could only help business owners physically in a handful of countries. Through my newsletter, I have been able to reach people around the world. That realization continues to fuel my desire to keep writing and sharing knowledge with others. What is the one piece of advice you would give to an ambitious business owner who wants to build a sustainable company over the long term? Don't forget to live while you are making a living. Avoid shortcuts. Do the whole thing and follow it through to the end. Always remember that the easy road is not the sustainable one. One of my favorite quotes is this: "If you are willing to do what other people don't do, you can get what they don't have." In my case, I would always choose mission over money, which means I would rather remain a missionary than become a mercenary. I don't want to be someone looking for quick gains and quick profits. I will continue fulfilling our mission statement by helping business owners grow their ventures through proper action plans and by continuing to make business planning accessible, affordable, and practical for entrepreneurs around the globe. If you are entering a hard market, it often means there is a greater opportunity on the other side because many competitors will avoid entering simply because it is difficult. Be careful with easy entry. Easy entry usually means more competition. Hard entry often means less competition. Do what you do best and work with the best. Choose the business model that serves your soul and your long-term success. Businesses are built by awesome people, and profits are generated by people. Always put people first. Put yourself in a responsible position and take care of your team members because they will attract clients, retain clients, and preserve your reputation. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Patrick Bradford

Written by Bohdan Hlushko, Head of Growth Bohdan Hlushko is a product strategist and bestselling author known for helping early-stage startups build focused, scalable products. He has launched 25+ products, contributed to $90M+ raised across 12+ funding rounds, and guided teams from zero to recurring revenue. Every year, thousands of startups begin with an idea they believe in, a motivated founding team, and, if they’re lucky, enough capital to get started. Most of them will not make it to year two. This has nothing to do with the founder's abilities, ideas, or level of commitment. From what I’ve seen working with startups at different stages over the past years, it all comes down to a very specific set of decisions made under uncertainty, with limited information and no margin for prolonged mistakes. The most persistent misconception in early-stage company building is that success follows from having the right idea. It doesn't. Ideas are cheap and ubiquitous. What separates the startups that find traction from the ones that don't is the ability to learn faster than they spend, make decisions before all the information is available, and stay aligned around a direction when everything around them is changing. I didn’t write this piece to inspire. I wanted it to cover the operational reality of building something from nothing, and shine a light on the principles that consistently show up in the companies that make it through year one with momentum. The strongest early-stage startups share a common profile. Let me walk you through it. 1. Start with the problem, not the product Most founders are tempted to fall in love with the wrong thing too early. They spot a gap, develop a strong point of view, and start building before they've had ten real conversations with the people they're building for. Founders building things nobody wants urgently enough to use, return to, or pay for, and doing so with great conviction, are what we fight against at INSART. The very first job of any early-stage company, in our opinion, is to prove that a specific group of people genuinely has a problem worth solving. Talk to users early and often Talk to the people you think you're building for. As simple as that. You don’t need to sell anything to them or validate your idea at this stage. Your job is to listen, and listen carefully. If you’ve done your job, you will walk away from these interviews knowing whether the problem you think exists actually exists in real life, and whether it's painful enough to change behavior. This sounds obvious. Almost no one does it properly. It might be really challenging to keep the founder’s assumptions from getting in the way. But they are dangerous precisely because they feel credible. You've done the research, spotted the gap, and you have conviction. But internal conviction and real customer insight are not the same thing, and one of them costs you two years and your runway when it's wrong. The companies that build in isolation with their heads down, shipping fast, and trusting their own logic, routinely launch products that solve problems nobody has, or not urgently enough to act on. They call it bad timing or a tough market. Usually, it's just that nobody asked. Practical tools: Run structured customer interviews before you build anything. Ask about the problem, not your solution. If they can't describe the pain unprompted, that's your answer. Set up a landing page or run a concierge MVP before writing code. Real interest looks like people giving you their email, their time, or their money, not telling it to you, "sounds cool." Write one crisp problem statement and one sentence describing who it's for. If you can't do both in plain language, you're not ready to build. Focus on product market fit first Product market fit has a simple definition that gets buried under jargon: users come back without being pushed. That's it. Users return on their own because the product is solving something real. Investors and operators who've seen enough startups know this, which is why they consistently favor evidence of demand over novelty. A clever idea with no retention is just a hypothesis with a logo. The first year is a validation phase. Not all startups like to hear that their first idea will most likely fail, but it’s true. So your job simply comes down to confirming whether there is something worth growing. The startups that get into trouble early almost always make the same mistake: they confuse early enthusiasm for traction and start building for scale before the core value is confirmed. Infrastructure on top of an unvalidated product is just a faster way to scale your mistakes. Practical tools: Track activation, repeat use, and conversion, not signups, pageviews, or social follows. Vanity metrics feel good and tell you nothing. Build short learning cycles: ship something small, watch what users actually do, review what you learned, and repeat. Speed to insight matters more than speed to launch. Keep a decision log: what you decided, why, and what happened. It sounds tedious, but believe me. After three months, it's one of the most useful documents you have. Key takeaway: Startups succeed when they understand customer needs before investing heavily in solutions. Almost every early-stage company has more uncertainty than advantage. The ones that close that gap fastest by learning from real users are the ones still standing at the end of year one. 2. Build fast, learn faster Speed is one of the few genuine advantages an early-stage startup has over an established competitor. You can make decisions in an afternoon that take a large company a quarter. The problem is that most founders waste that advantage building the wrong things quickly. Launch an MVP, not a perfect product A minimum viable product is not a bad version of your product. It's the smallest thing you can put in front of real users to test whether your core assumption is correct. Every feature you add before you've validated the core value is a bet you're making with money and time you don't have. Founders overbuild for understandable reasons. They want to impress early users, they're nervous about launching something rough, and they believe one more feature will make the difference. It rarely does. What makes the difference is whether you're solving a real problem. The question to ask before every build decision in year one is not, "Would users like this?" It is, "Does this help us learn something we don't already know?" Practical tools: Define your MVP by the single assumption most critical to your business model. Build only what tests that assumption. Set a hard deadline for your first release and treat slipping it as a warning sign. List every feature on your roadmap and ask: Does this validate the core, or does it decorate it? Be ruthless about the answer. Create short learning cycles If you can do yourself one favor in the first year, make it this: implement tight feedback loops. Release, measure, learn, adjust, and move fast enough that each cycle informs the next. This requires more discipline than it sounds. It means resisting the urge to keep building after a launch instead of stopping to understand what just happened. It means defining what you're trying to learn before you ship, not after. It means being honest about what the data is telling you, even when it contradicts what you hoped to see. A startup that ships every two weeks and reviews what it learned has an advantage over one that ships every two months and celebrates without interrogating the results. Practical tools: Use weekly OKRs or a single-page sprint plan. Better to pick one and stick to it. The format matters less than the habit. Before each release, write down the one thing you're trying to learn. After each release, write down what you learned. The gap between those two is where your instincts improve. Set a short, fixed review cadence for looking at behavior data. What did users do? Where did they stop? What did they ignore? Measure instead of guessing Intuition matters in a startup. Pattern recognition, founder instinct, and the ability to read a room are real and valuable. The early metrics that matter are narrow and behavioral: are users completing the core action? Are they coming back? Are they converting? Everything else is context at best and noise at worst. The teams that get into trouble are the ones celebrating signup numbers while nobody owns what happens after the signup, which, as anyone who has audited a trial funnel knows, is where most of the value is disappearing. Define your activation moment early. What is the one action a new user must take to experience the real value of your product for the first time? Write it down in a single sentence. Then check whether you're measuring it. In most early-stage companies, the answer is no. Practical tools: Define your "aha moment" as a specific, observable user action, not a feeling, not a session length, and not a login. Build a simple activation funnel: signup, onboarding completion, first meaningful action, and return visit within 72 hours. That's your early retention story. Maintain a "speed to insight" metric alongside your release cadence. How long does it take from shipping to knowing whether it worked? Key takeaway: Early startups win by maximizing learning, not by maximizing features. Shipping fast only creates value if you're honest about what the data tells you when it lands, and disciplined enough to act on it. 3. Build a team that can execute There's a version of the startup story that treats the team as secondary to the idea, as if the right concept, properly funded, will find a way to execute itself. It won't. In year one, before you have product market fit, before you have revenue, before you have any real proof that this works, the team is the company. Everything else is a hypothesis. The inconvenient truth is that most early-stage failures that get attributed to bad timing or a tough market are actually team failures. Misaligned founders, unclear ownership, and cultures that reward looking busy over making decisions. I know these don't show up on a cap table, but they kill companies just as reliably as running out of cash. Build culture before you need it If I asked you right now, “What is culture?” what would be the first thing that comes to mind? Here’s how I see it. Culture is the sum of how decisions get made when nobody's watching, including what gets rewarded, what gets tolerated, and what gets ignored. In a team of four, the founders are setting those norms whether they intend to or not. The habits that form in the first few months are surprisingly durable. A team that defaults to transparency when things go wrong builds a different organization than one that defaults to optimism. A founder who models clear thinking under pressure creates a different decision-making culture than one who shoots from the hip and backtracks. That’s a heck of a good reason to stay deliberate about the behaviors you're modeling from day one, because they will outlast your founding team and shape every hire you make after them. Practical tools: Name two or three specific behaviors you want to be true of this team, not values, behaviors. "We share bad news early" is a behavior. "Integrity" is not. Build accountability into your regular rhythm, like weekly reviews where progress, blockers, and decisions are visible to everyone. When something goes wrong, make the debrief a habit, not a postmortem reserved for disasters. Prioritize execution over titles Early-stage teams don't have the luxury of narrow job descriptions. The person who owns the product will talk to customers, help close deals, and write the onboarding copy, often in the same week. The teams that thrive in this environment are the ones where everyone is oriented around outcomes and where "that's not my job" is not a sentence anyone says. This requires a specific kind of person: adaptable, comfortable with ambiguity, and capable of making decisions without a clear playbook. Hiring for titles and seniority before you have the operational complexity to justify them is one of the more common and avoidable early mistakes. A small team of people who move well under uncertainty will outperform a larger team of specialists every time, until the business is complex enough to need specialization. Practical tools: Hire for adaptability and judgment first, domain expertise second. At this stage, the ability to figure things out matters more than having figured them out before. Give people real ownership of outcomes. Ownership produces better decisions and better people. Keep the team small enough that communication is natural and accountability is obvious. Complexity scales faster than most founders expect. Key takeaway: A startup's early success depends as much on team dynamics as on the product itself. The best idea in the hands of a misaligned, poorly structured team is just a slower failure. The right team, executing with clarity and honesty, can recover from almost anything else. 4. Manage the business as carefully as the product Surviving the first year often comes down to one thing: having enough runway to find the answer before the money runs out. Protect your runway Every dollar you spend in year one is a bet on what will generate learning or traction. Spend it on something that does neither, and you haven't just lost the money. You've lost the time it represented. That's the framing that changes spending decisions. The longer your runway, the more shots you get, the more wrong turns you can recover from, and the more negotiating leverage you have with investors, partners, and potential hires. A startup with eighteen months of runway and no revenue is in a fundamentally different position than one with four months and the same metrics. The discipline required here is harder than it sounds, because growth pressure is real and visible, while runway erosion is harder to see. A new tool that costs $400 a month, a hire that's "almost justified," a conference that might generate leads, individually, none of these feels significant. Collectively, they're the difference between reaching product market fit and running out of time two months before you would have. Practical tools: Before any significant spend, ask one question: Does this extend our learning or accelerate our traction? If the honest answer is no, it waits. Set a minimum runway threshold. Nine months is a reasonable floor. Treat dropping below it as a trigger for immediate action. Understand your business model Knowing how you'll eventually make money is not a detail you can defer until the product is built. The shape of your business model affects everything: what metrics matter, which customers to prioritize, how to think about pricing, and whether the unit economics of what you're building can ever support a real company. This doesn't mean you need a perfect revenue model on day one. It means you should have a clear hypothesis about where value is created, who captures it, and roughly what the numbers need to look like for the business to work. Founders who haven't thought this through tend to discover late, and usually expensively, that they've built something customers like but won't pay for, or that the cost of acquiring and serving customers makes the business structurally unprofitable at any scale. Early attention to unit economics is mostly about direction. Are you moving toward a model that works, or away from one? Practical tools: Write down your revenue hypothesis in plain language: who pays, for what, how much, and how often. Track customer acquisition cost and retention from the beginning, even roughly. These numbers will tell you whether the business model is viable before you've committed to it. Talk to customers about pricing early. Willingness to pay is one of the most important signals you can gather and one of the most consistently avoided conversations in early-stage companies. Avoid premature scaling Premature scaling is what happens when a startup starts optimizing for growth before it has confirmed what it's growing. Demand should come before expansion. If users are finding you, staying, and telling others, then scale the channels bringing them in. If they're not, adding volume to a leaky funnel just means more people leaving faster. The activities that can wait in year one are almost always obvious in retrospect: the rebrand, the enterprise sales hire, the second market, the conference presence. Each of these has a right time. That time is almost never before you've found product market fit. Practical tools: Make a short list of "scaling activities" you're tempted by and put a condition next to each one, the specific milestone that would justify it. Review the list monthly. When growth feels slow, resist the instinct to add channels or headcount. Instead, go deeper on what's already working and understand it fully before you expand it. Treat your first 50 or 100 customers as a research project, not a revenue line. What they tell you is worth more than what they pay you. Key takeaway: Financial discipline creates the time needed to achieve traction. The startups that manage their business as carefully as their product make better decisions, because they're not making them under the pressure of an imminent zero. 5. Make strategic decisions with the long term in mind Year one has a way of collapsing your horizon. When you're moving fast, putting out fires, and trying to hit next month's targets, thinking about the long term can feel like a luxury. But the decisions you make in the first twelve months are the foundations that the rest of the company gets built on. Get them wrong, and you spend years correcting for them. The startups that navigate this well know where they're trying to go well enough to make consistent decisions about how to get there. Define the destination early Some startups are building for acquisition, building a focused product in a specific category that a larger player will eventually want. Some are going for venture scale growth, a large market, a scalable model, and a path to category leadership. Others are building a sustainable, profitable niche business with no intention of raising institutional capital. All three are legitimate. What isn't legitimate is not knowing which one you're doing. The destination shapes everything. A startup building for acquisition should think carefully about which acquirers exist, what they value, and whether the product is being built in a way that makes integration plausible. A startup going for venture scale needs to be honest about whether the market is large enough and whether the model can support the growth rate investors will expect. A founder building a sustainable niche business should resist pressure to pursue growth strategies designed for a different kind of company. Practical tools: Write a one-paragraph "destination statement": what does this company look like in five years if everything goes well? Share it with your cofounders and your earliest advisors, and see where the disagreements surface. When evaluating a major decision, ask: Does this move us toward our destination, or does it just feel like progress? Revisit the destination statement every six months. It's allowed to change, but the change should be deliberate. Leverage mentors and strategic partnerships One of the most consistent advantages available to early-stage founders is access to people who have made the mistakes you're about to make. Experienced operators, domain-specific advisors, and investors with genuine portfolio knowledge, these relationships compress learning in ways that no amount of internal iteration can replicate. The founders who use this well treat advisors as thinking partners. They bring specific, hard problems and ask for honest reactions, not encouragement. The ones who use it poorly show up with polished decks looking for affirmation, and usually get it, because most people are too polite to say what they think unless you ask directly. Strategic partnerships deserve the same clarity of purpose. A partnership that gives you access to a new customer segment, a distribution channel, or a capability you'd otherwise spend a year building is worth serious attention. Practical tools: Identify two or three advisors with specific, relevant experience, people who have navigated the exact terrain you're on. Come to every advisor conversation with a specific question or decision you're wrestling with. Vague check-ins produce vague feedback. Evaluate every potential partnership against a single criterion: does this accelerate our path to validation or scale? Key takeaway: Strong startups combine adaptability with a clear sense of direction. The long term should be the lens through which year one decisions are made. Wrapping up The first year of a startup is not a miniature version of what comes later. It is its own distinct phase, with its own logic, its own failure modes, and its own definition of success. Understanding that distinction and operating accordingly is what separates the companies that arrive at year two with real traction from the ones that arrive exhausted, underfunded, and still searching for product-market fit. What makes this phase hard is the daily pressure to ignore the complexities in front of them. To build the feature instead of having the conversation. To celebrate the signup, instead of asking why users aren't coming back. To hire for the company you want to be instead of the one you actually are right now. The startups most likely to succeed in their first year are not the ones that move the fastest in every direction. They are the ones that learn the fastest, spend the smartest, and stay relentlessly focused on solving a real customer problem. That focus, sustained through the uncertainty, the setbacks, and the moments when shortcuts look reasonable, is what year one is really about. Follow me on LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Bohdan Hlushko Bohdan Hlushko, Head of Growth Bohdan has worked closely with early-stage startups for years, witnessing firsthand the ambition, optimism, and hard realities that come with building from the ground up. That experience shapes how he works today. Bohdan helps founders design products that are strategically focused and operationally scalable, bridging product strategy, engineering logic, and investor-ready storytelling.

Written by Janice Elsley, Leadership Expert, International Author, and Podcast Host Janice Elsley is a leadership strategist, author, and keynote speaker who helps CEOs and leaders elevate their impact. As founder of Harissa Business Partners, she blends neuroscience, change management, and human design to drive success. There's a version of you that you don't let people see. She's the one who has big dreams but keeps them quiet because what if people think she's being unrealistic? She's the one who knows she's capable of more but stays small because it feels safer than standing out. She's the woman who edits herself in meetings, softens her opinions, laughs at jokes that aren't funny, and says "I'm fine" when she's anything but. She's the version of you that you've learned to hide because, somewhere along the way, you got the message that being fully yourself was too much. Too loud. Too ambitious. Too intense. Too something. So you learned to dim your light. To play it safe. To be the version of yourself that makes everyone else comfortable, even when it makes you feel like you're disappearing. But here's what I know: the version of you that you're hiding? She's the one the world actually needs. The cost of playing small Let's talk about what it costs you to hide. It costs you your energy, because pretending to be someone you're not is exhausting. Every time you edit yourself, every time you hold back, every time you choose what's safe over what's true, you're spending energy maintaining a version of yourself that isn't real. It costs you your confidence, because when you're constantly performing, you lose touch with who you actually are. You start to believe that the edited version is all you have to offer. It costs you your relationships, because people can't truly connect with someone who's hiding. Intimacy requires vulnerability. Vulnerability requires you to show up as you are, not as you think you should be. It costs you your impact, because the gifts you're here to give, the leadership you're meant to offer, and the difference you're meant to make all require you to be fully yourself. You can't change the world while you're busy trying to fit into it. Why we hide So why do we do it? Why do we hide the parts of ourselves that are the most powerful? Because, at some point, we learned that being ourselves wasn't safe. Maybe you were told you were "too much." Too emotional. Too opinionated. Too ambitious. You learned that to be loved, to be accepted, and to belong, you needed to tone it down. Maybe you watched other women get criticised for being bold, for speaking up, for taking up space, and you decided it was safer to stay quiet. Maybe you've been burned before. You showed up fully, and someone made you feel small for it. So you built walls. You learned to protect yourself by hiding. These are survival strategies. They worked, for a time. They kept you safe. They helped you navigate a world that wasn't always kind to women who refused to shrink. But here's the thing about survival strategies: they have an expiration date. What kept you safe at 15, at 25, at 35, might be the very thing that's keeping you stuck now. What happens when you stop hiding I'm not going to lie to you. Showing up fully is uncomfortable. It's vulnerable. It requires you to risk being seen, really seen, and that can feel terrifying. But here's what happens when you stop hiding: You start to feel like yourself again. That heaviness you've been carrying, the exhaustion of pretending, it starts to lift. You remember what it feels like to take a full breath. You attract the right people. When you show up authentically, you stop attracting people who need you to be small. You start attracting people who celebrate you for being exactly who you are. You build real confidence. Not the kind that comes from external validation, but the kind that comes from internal alignment. The kind that says, "I know who I am, and I'm not apologising for it." You create the impact you're meant to have. Because the world doesn't need another version of someone else. It needs the version of you that only you can be. How to start showing up fully Here's where to begin: Identify where you're hiding. Where are you editing yourself? Where are you playing small? Where are you choosing what's safe over what's true? Get honest about it. Ask yourself: What am I afraid will happen if I show up fully? Rejection? Criticism? Judgment? Name the fear. Because once you name it, you can decide if it's actually true or just an old story your brain is telling you to keep you safe. Start small. You don't have to announce your biggest dream to the world tomorrow. Just practise showing up a little more authentically in one area of your life. Share an opinion you usually keep to yourself. Set a boundary you've been avoiding. Take up space in a conversation instead of shrinking back. Surround yourself with people who see you. Find the people who don't need you to be smaller. The ones who celebrate your bigness. The ones who remind you that you're not too much, you're exactly enough. Remember: you're not for everyone. That's okay. The right people will love you for being fully yourself. The wrong people will be uncomfortable. Let them be. The woman you're becoming The version of you that you're hiding isn't a future version you need to become. She's already here. She's been here all along, waiting for you to stop apologising for her existence. She's the woman who knows what she wants and isn't afraid to go after it. The woman who speaks her truth even when her voice shakes. The woman who takes up space unapologetically because she knows her presence matters. She's not too much. She's not too loud. She's not too ambitious or too intense or too anything. She's exactly who you're meant to be, and the world is waiting for her. Let's do this together I'm Janice Elsley, international author, podcast host of Legacy Leaders, keynote speaker, and award-winning leadership expert. I help women stop hiding and start leading from a place of authentic power and unshakable self-trust. If you're ready to stop playing small and start showing up fully, subscribe to my podcast, Legacy Leaders, and follow me on YouTube @JaniceElsleyLeadership, or connect with me on Instagram @JaniceElsley. If you're ready to do the deep internal work of stepping into the fullest version of yourself, explore my programs at Janice Elsley. The version of you that you're hiding? She's ready. The question is, are you? Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Janice Elsley Janice Elsley, Leadership Expert, International Author, and Podcast Host Janice Elsley is a leadership expert, author, and keynote speaker helping CEOs and executives future-proof their leadership with neuroscience-driven strategies. As founder of Harissa Business Partners, she drives performance, inclusivity, and talent retention. Her book Leadership Legacy and programs, Leading Edge Women, The Leading Edge, and First 100 Days of Leadership, equip leaders with the confidence and strategies to make an impact. Whether coaching executives or delivering transformational keynotes, Janice creates real results.

Oslo, Norway – June 7, 2026. Author, educator, and 2026 New Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist – Linn Angell has released Beelove and Earth School, a beautifully illustrated children's book that encourages kindness, empathy, imagination, and a love of learning. Published through the newly established Hummingbird House Publishing, the book is available now and is designed for children aged 6-9, as well as parents, educators, homeschoolers, and families who value meaningful storytelling and whole-child learning. BeeLove and Earth School follows Beelove, a cosmic bee from the planet Amandu, who is sent to Earth School to learn about love. Accompanied by her friends Thorny and Luma, BeeLove soon discovers that life's most important lessons may not be found inside a classroom at all, but through friendship, courage, nature, and the everyday experiences that shape who we become. "Beelove was created as a reminder that learning happens everywhere," said Linn Angell, author, educator, and founder of the Love in Education initiative. "Whether in a classroom, a homeschooling environment, or through everyday experiences in nature, children naturally learn through curiosity, friendship, imagination, and connection. I wanted to create a story that celebrates these qualities and reminds children that some of life's most important lessons come from the heart." Blending gentle adventure with themes of compassion, emotional awareness, and wonder, Beelove and Earth School invites readers into a magical world where lakes teach hope, flowers protect what is precious, and questions matter more than answers. As Beelove searches for Earth School, she begins to discover that learning is not simply something we do – it is something we live. Featuring lyrical storytelling and dreamlike illustrations, the book aligns with Angell's broader vision of Love in Education, an approach that supports creativity, emotional well-being, imagination, and whole-person learning. Beelove and Earth School was created as a resource for families, educators, and homeschoolers seeking stories that nurture both academic curiosity and the inner development of the child. BeeLove and Earth School is available now through Amazon and selected online retailers worldwide. The book is distributed through IngramSpark and registered with Bokbasen, making it available to bookstores, libraries, schools, and educational institutions. About the author Linn Angell is an author, educator, and founder of the 144 Love in Education initiative. She is a 2026 New Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist for the book “The Light Warrior Diary & 7 Love Letters from Gaia” and the founder of Hummingbird House Publishing. Through children's books, educational resources, and the 144 App, Angell explores creativity, emotional well-being, imagination, and conscious learning for children, families, educators, and homeschoolers. Media contact Linn Angell Author, Educator, Founder of 144 Love in Education www.144.no www.144app.no http://linnangell.no/ E-mail: hello@sunya.no

Written by Matilda Wayte, Neuroscientist Matilda Wayte is a Clinical Exercise Physiologist and Neuroscience Researcher whose work sits at the intersection of trauma, brain health, and human behaviour. She brings both academic rigour and deep personal insight to everything she writes. You’re doing all the right things: the gym, the green smoothie, the meditation app. So why does it still feel like something is missing? The answer might be simpler and more confronting than you think. First things first: From productive to passive Let me be upfront with you, shifting your mindset from productive to passive is, without question, the hardest part of this whole thing. I’ll be honest. I’m genuinely good at implementing most professional wellness advice. So good, in fact, that I’ve most certainly overdone all of it to the point of being a little too obsessive, and then had to reel it back. Because anything done too much is not healthy, right? Right. Anyway, I’ll lay them out. The tried, tested, researched well-being saviours. Drum roll, please. Exercise, easy. Eat well, easy. Meditate, easy. Journal, easy. Get plenty of sleep, easy (I love sleep). Breathwork, easy. Go on vacation, not so easy with my bank balance. Drink coffee. Wait, is that researched? Meh, who cares. It makes me happy. Also, probably the reason I can’t afford more vacations. But you also have to remember to be kind to your mind, to let yourself rest, and to remember that you are a human being, not a human doing. Why, why are these ones so much harder than the rest? The lettuce leaf problem: When wellness becomes its own kind of harm To actually rest and reset your nervous system, you have to prioritize inner rest first. Not fair, I know. But trust me, get that wrong, and you end up like I did in a previous life: eating several lettuce leaves and half a chicken breast after four hours at the gym, grappling with serious body dysmorphia, and calling it wellness. I don’t care what the internet has told you. It’s not as cute as it sounds. This isn’t just a cautionary tale, it’s biology. Research shows that overtraining without adequate rest leads to overtraining syndrome, increased depression, low motivation, anger, eating disorders, and burnout in up to 10% of athletes. Too much exercise without the right inner foundation isn’t self-care, it’s just a different flavor of self-harm. The fear underneath the busyness I think the scariest thing about taking a break is the thought that you might like it so much you never go back. It’s kind of like how I didn’t take a gap year after working two jobs simultaneously, going to high school, and training 12+ hours a week for gymnastics, because I was terrified that if I stopped, I’d never start again. Twelve years and three degrees later, the joke is entirely on me. The more appropriate fear should have been that I’d never start resting, not that I’d never start working. Even when I’m not technically clocked on, my mind is still occupied with work: a client, a research paper, or even scrolling through my Instagram page, just for fun, with no pay involved. My relationships have suffered for it too. I was either talking about work or unconsciously treating the people closest to me like clients I needed to fix. Not my finest chapter, but this is the healing journey, and I’m allowed to acknowledge that now. Here’s what neuroscience actually says about rest: the more time you spend doing nothing, the better it is for your brain, improving intelligence, creativity, memory, problem-solving, and emotional processing. Research even found that people who took a 30-minute daytime nap had larger brains than those who powered through the day. Rest isn’t laziness, it’s neuroscience. You can’t bake a cake and then mix the ingredients Here’s the thing nobody tells you: in order to rest your whole body and nervous system, you can’t just exercise, eat well, meditate, journal, sleep, do breathwork, go on vacation, drink coffee, and get sunlight. First, you have to convince yourself that you’re doing these things because you love yourself and deserve care. It’s okay to take a break, to rest, and to believe that self-care is something you are entitled to, not something you have to earn. The order matters. You can’t put all the ingredients for a cake in a tin, bake them, and then pull it out and try to mix them together. Wellness works the same way, you can’t force yourself to go through the motions from an unhealthy, self-critical mindset and expect real results. You have to shift into a kind, caring relationship with yourself first. Then the tools actually work. Science is unambiguous on this. A meta-analysis found that self-compassion predicts better outcomes across most health domains, including physical health, immune function, sleep, and overall health behavior. Research from Polyvagal Theory shows that when humans feel safe, their nervous systems support health, growth, and restoration, but without that felt sense of safety, none of the other wellness tools can do their job properly. Self-compassion isn’t the soft, optional part of your wellness routine. It’s the foundation everything else sits on. So, where do you start? Before the gym, before the green smoothie, before the meditation app, start here. Tell yourself it’s okay to stop. Tell yourself you deserve care, not because you’ve earned it, but because you exist. Notice how that feels in your body. If it feels uncomfortable or untrue, that’s not a character flaw, that’s just where you’re starting from. Start there. Everything else follows. The wellness industry will keep selling you tools, and some of them are genuinely wonderful. But no tool works in a nervous system that doesn’t feel safe. No habit sticks in a mind that believes it doesn’t deserve to be well. You are not a human doing, you are a human being. Being really, fully being is where it all starts. I’m Tilly, a Clinical Exercise Physiologist and neuroscience educator, building a space where people who feel like they don’t fit can come and feel seen. Find me at @theneuro.ep on Instagram. Follow me on LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Matilda Wayte Matilda Wayte, Neuroscientist Matilda Wayte is a Clinical Exercise Physiologist and Neuroscientist specialising in rehabilitation, trauma, mental health, and the neuroscience of human behaviour. She holds a Bachelor of Clinical Exercise Physiology from QUT, a Graduate Certificate in Neurological Rehabilitation from ECU, and a Graduate Certificate in Mental Health and Neuroscience. Matilda's work is shaped by both her clinical experience across occupational rehabilitation and neurological settings, and her own lived experience of trauma, giving her a rare ability to translate complex science into something that feels genuinely human. She creates research-grounded content for broad public audiences through her platform @theneuro.ep on Instagram and LinkedIn. Sources: PubMed – Self-Compassion, Physical Health & Health Behaviour Meta-Analysis (2019) Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience – Polyvagal Theory: A Science of Safety, Porges (2022) NIH/PubMed – Physiological & Psychological Effects of Overtraining (2021) Next Big Idea Club – Rest & the Brain’s Default Mode Network

Written by Anne Wallen, Director and Founder of MaternityWise Intl Anne Wallen is a respected figure in women’s health with over 30 years of experience and is a leading voice on global change in maternity care, particularly for those at greatest risk. Becoming a doula is a trendy topic right now. Most people assume doulas only attend births, but doulas are for much more than that. Doulas are an anchoring, wraparound care provider for families during the pregnancy, birth, and postpartum period. Families expect them to know, understand, and translate information throughout the entire early parenting experience. Doulas must be able to step up to the plate and fulfill that circumspect role, or families get lost in the shuffle between different medical specialties, and their story gets parceled into sound bites that don’t truly reflect their experience or needs. The role of a doula is deeply personal, powerful, and transformative, not just for the families they support, but also for the doulas themselves. As the birth and postpartum landscape continues to evolve, so do the needs of expecting and new families. To stay relevant, competitive, and sustainably impactful, it’s crucial for doulas to consider expanding their skills and services. Whether you’re a new doula looking to establish a strong foundation or a seasoned birth worker seeking growth, here are seven compelling reasons to diversify your offerings: 1. Increase income potential Let’s start with the obvious: financial sustainability. Birth support can be intensive, time-limited work. By adding related services such as childbirth education classes, placenta encapsulation, lactation consulting, or postpartum doula care, you open multiple streams of income that don’t all require on-call hours. For example, hosting a monthly prenatal workshop or offering virtual coaching can generate steady income while allowing flexibility. Diversifying your services allows you to earn more while maintaining your boundaries and work-life balance. 2. Meet the full spectrum of client needs Pregnancy, birth, and postpartum are complex journeys with emotional, physical, and informational needs. When you can support clients across the full spectrum, whether with prenatal nutrition guidance, birth planning, postpartum recovery tips, or infant sleep support, you become a comprehensive resource. This holistic approach not only makes your services more valuable but also positions you as a trusted partner throughout the entire perinatal experience. 3. Stand out in a competitive market The doula field is growing, and clients often have many providers to choose from. Offering a range of specialized services can help you stand out. Perhaps you have trauma-informed care training, specialize in VBAC support, or offer prenatal yoga. These unique offerings can differentiate you in a crowded market. Clients aren’t just hiring you for your time; they’re hiring you for your experience and expertise. The more specialized knowledge you have, the more you can tailor your services to your ideal clientele. 4. Build client loyalty and repeat business When clients can come to you for a variety of services, they’re more likely to stick with you and refer you. Maybe you were their birth doula, and now they trust you as their postpartum doula or lactation consultant. Or they loved your prenatal workshops and are now recommending you to friends. Each added service increases opportunities for continued engagement and long-term relationships, helping you build a solid foundation of repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals. 5. Adapt to changing client demands Modern families are seeking more holistic and accessible care options. Today’s parents might be looking for support with fertility, mental health, partner involvement, or even preparing siblings for a new baby. By staying educated and flexible in your offerings, you remain responsive to the evolving needs of your clients. Adding virtual services, culturally competent care, or inclusive LGBTQ+ support ensures you remain relevant in an ever-changing world. 6. Reduce burnout with diverse work Being on-call for births can be exhausting, mentally, emotionally, and physically. By integrating services that are more flexible, like prenatal coaching, meal prep, or educational webinars, you can create a healthier balance in your schedule. Offering a mix of in-person and virtual, intensive and light-touch services gives you more control over your energy output and reduces burnout, while still allowing you to do meaningful work. 7. Enhance professional credibility When you invest in continued education and skill-building, it shows. Clients notice. Referral partners like midwives, OBs, therapists, and lactation consultants notice too. The more you grow professionally, the more credibility and trust you earn within your community. Plus, having certifications or experience in complementary areas makes your business more resilient. If one service slows down, you can lean into another, ensuring long-term sustainability and professional respect. Final thoughts Being a doula is about showing up for others during some of the most intimate, life-changing moments of their lives. Expanding your skills and services doesn’t mean changing your core mission; it means deepening your capacity to serve, support, and sustain both your clients and your business. So whether it’s learning a new modality, offering digital products, or starting a community class, take the leap. Your future clients, and your future self, will thank you. If you are looking for ways to creatively boost your support for families, explore the many Advanced Skills classes that MaternityWise offers. MaternityWise is a reliable source for community, support, education, and growth development for birth workers of all kinds. Follow me on Facebook and Instagram for more info! Read more from Anne Wallen Anne Wallen, Director and Founder of MaternityWise Intl Anne Wallen is a respected figure in women’s health with over 30 years of experience and is a leading voice on global change in maternity care, particularly for those at greatest risk. She continues to educate and empower birth professionals in more than 20 countries, contributes to a variety of curricula, and shapes the future of maternal health through her impactful role as a speaker and mentor. Anne is the Director and co-founder of MaternityWise International, and her legacy lies in inspiring generational changes around and elevating women's healthcare worldwide.

Written by Greg Tennant, Scaling Partner to Startups and Investors Greg Tennant is the scaling partner to some of the world’s most ambitious founders and senior leaders. He is the founder of andExecute, where he helps startups and scale-ups make scale work. Drawing on 20+ years across 20+ countries, his focus is leadership, execution, and building businesses that perform as they scale. Most VC firms spend enormous energy finding the next great investment. Very few systematically improve the ones they already have. Here is what portfolio-wide operational uplift looks like, and why it may be the highest-leverage move available to investors right now. The uncomfortable truth about the middle of the portfolio Inevitably, some portfolio companies become what the industry calls zombies. Not dead, but not growing. Revenues are there. The product exists. But morale is low, execution is stalling, and the founder is quietly looking for the exit. Every investor has what one prominent VC describes as a line of despair, the point at which they lose faith and devote minimal effort to a company. Some sell their stake for as little as a dollar just to get it off the books. Attention shifts to the winners. Advisory becomes less frequent. Follow-on capital dries up. The founder is left largely alone. The company drifts. Sometimes it recovers, more often it does not. How much of that underperformance is actually inevitable, and how much is operational? How many of those companies could be doing significantly more with the capital they have if someone were looking at how they run rather than just what the numbers say after the fact? The power law problem every GP knows Investments that return the fund: 5–10% [1] Returns from top 1–3 investments: 50–80% [2] VC-backed companies that never return cash: 75% [3] What is happening operationally inside the rest of the portfolio? And is anyone actually looking? The companies that get backed hard and the ones that do not Most companies that attract heavy investor attention share one thing, a differentiated product or business model. Whatever the sector, whatever the fund thesis, the pattern is the same. The company with the breakthrough technology, the differentiated product, the innovative business model, the defensible market position, or the category-defining brand gets the attention. That is where follow-on capital flows, where board time concentrates, and where strategic guidance sharpens. This dynamic is most pronounced in mature venture markets like the US, where power law thinking is deeply embedded. European VC tends to hold relationships longer and support more broadly. In Asia Pacific, the shift is already underway, with investors moving away from multiple expansion toward operational improvement, and major fund managers actively building portfolio operations teams. In Latin America, the post-2021 correction has forced a structural change, with investors now rewarding operational discipline and capital efficiency over growth narratives, yet over 1,700 companies have raised seed and early-stage funding since 2019 without securing the next round. The operational gap in the middle of the portfolio is not a US problem, it is a global one. Strategic research identifies two primary paths to competitive advantage, differentiation through product, business model, or customer experience, and operational efficiency, competing not through what you build but through how you build it. The strongest companies build both. But Porter’s research is clear, straddling both without a deliberate choice is a recipe for below-average performance. Most founders pour everything into differentiation. Very few invest with the same intentionality in operations. The companies in the middle, neither clearly differentiated nor operationally sharp, are in the most precarious position. A differentiated product or business model is one way to win. A differentiated operating model is another. Most portfolio companies are being advised on one and left to figure out the other on their own. What GP advisory actually covers Most VC firms add genuine value, board seats, strategic guidance, network introductions, help with the next raise, market positioning, and talent connections. What most GPs privately acknowledge is that this advisory operates at the commercial and strategic layer, revenue growth, market expansion, product direction, and fundraising readiness. What gets far less attention is how each business actually runs, how the founding team coordinates, how strategy reaches delivery teams, how culture holds as the team grows, whether the right people own the right things, and whether the business is burning capital efficiently or leaking it through friction nobody has named. Most funds do not have the capacity or the diagnostic tools to get inside the operating infrastructure of 20 to 30 portfolio companies simultaneously. So investors read lagging indicators. By the time the numbers tell a story, the damage has already happened, capital burned, teams misaligned for months. The cost of fixing it is significantly higher than catching it early. Investors see the numbers. The numbers are a lagging indicator. By the time the data signals a problem, value has already leaked, capital has already burned, and the damage is already harder and more expensive to fix. The gap between what investors know and what is actually happening The people who know exactly where the problems are, and where the opportunities are, are the employees inside the business. They know what is working, where the friction is, and what leadership is missing. The question is whether anyone is systematically asking them. Most investors are not. Most founders are not, at least not in a structured way that produces actionable intelligence at the right frequency. So the operating infrastructure of the portfolio remains largely invisible until the numbers move in the wrong direction. If investors had real-time visibility into the operational health of each portfolio company, the operating model, the culture, and the employee sentiment, they would know where to spend more advisory time, where to intervene, and where things are working well enough to transfer to other companies. Founders benefit too. The same visibility that helps an investor make better decisions helps a founder understand their own business more clearly before the numbers force the conversation. Operational maturity is stage-dependent Operational uplift is not a single intervention applied uniformly across a portfolio. What a pre-seed company needs is fundamentally different from what a Series B company needs. The work is fit for purpose, matched to the stage, the complexity, and the maturity of the business. Pre-seed/seed: Founding team formation, ways of working, cadence, cultural norms, and the foundations of operational scale. Seed/Series A: Leadership design, role ownership, planning and delivery rhythms, culture health, and operating model design. Series A/Series B+: Coordination at scale, cascade and alignment across functions and markets, execution efficiency, and cultural integration. What portfolio-wide operational uplift actually looks like The opportunity is not just to fix individual companies. It is to build a systematic capability that operates across the entire portfolio, identifies what is working, and scales it from one company to the next. The pattern of operational problems across a VC portfolio is far more consistent than most investors realise. The underlying challenge, how leaders align, how teams coordinate, and how strategy reaches execution, is remarkably similar from company to company, stage to stage. Firms that capture and transfer that knowledge systematically will have a structural advantage. Not just better individual companies, but better portfolio economics. How this works in practice The model runs on three levels, applied consistently across the portfolio every quarter and calibrated to the stage of each company. 1. Portfolio-wide diagnostics Every quarter, a structured diagnostic assesses each company's operating model health, culture strength, and employee sentiment. Not the founder's view, not HR's view, not the board's view, but the view from the people doing the work. This gives investors real-time visibility across the entire portfolio, surfacing where value is leaking before the numbers confirm it, and identifying where performance is strong enough to transfer to other companies. Stage-aware throughout, the benchmarks for a seed-stage founding team are different from those for a scaling Series B organisation. 2. Targeted micro-interventions Based on the diagnostic, targeted interventions are deployed where the challenge sits. A Clarity Lab is a structured one-day session for founders and leadership to align on findings, build a change plan, and set a 90-day execution roadmap. An Executive Rewire goes deeper with leadership teams to redesign how they plan, coordinate, cascade priorities, and connect strategy to delivery. An All-In engagement works directly with delivery teams, functions, or divisions to strengthen how the work gets done. Each intervention is fit for stage, at pre-seed it may be founding team formation, at Series A leadership alignment and planning rhythm, and at Series B cross-functional coordination at scale. 3. Portfolio knowledge transfer Every intervention builds the portfolio playbook. What works at Seed, what works at Series A, what works in specific functions, markets, and scaling challenges. That knowledge transfers systematically from one portfolio company to the next. Scale what works. Retire what does not. Rinse and repeat. The goal is not to fix one company at a time. It is to build a repeatable operational playbook that scales across the portfolio and compounds returns from the inside out. The bandwidth problem Most VC firms simply do not have enough operational capacity to go broad and deep across a portfolio simultaneously. There are three options, and each has real limits. Building an in-house platform team can scale, but only the largest funds have the capital and draw to do it properly. A dedicated Head of Platform costs $200,000 to $400,000 a year before adding the team underneath. A full operational function across a 20- to 30-company portfolio runs into seven figures annually. The math only works at significant fund scale, and even then, platform teams tend to concentrate support on the winners rather than running systematically across the whole portfolio. Finding the right external operational partners can also scale, but in practice, most external engagements are episodic, company-specific, and disconnected from the rest of the portfolio. The partner helps one company, generates a use case that never travels anywhere, and the fund is back to square one for the next company facing the same problem. Without a portfolio-wide view, external support stays fragmented regardless of the quality of the individual engagement. Relying on investment partners to carry the operational load cannot scale. Too many competing priorities, deal sourcing, board work, LP relations, fundraising, mean operational depth always gets squeezed. It is not a discipline problem. It is structural. The result is that mid-sized and emerging funds, managing $50M to $300M, running portfolios of 15 to 30 companies, with lean teams and genuine ambition to add value beyond capital, are the most exposed. Too large to rely on partners alone. Too small to build a platform team. Too busy to solve it properly. For these funds, the answer is not to build or buy. It is to partner with someone who already has the portfolio-wide model, the diagnostic tools, and the operational playbooks built specifically for how businesses run. Not marketing, not sales, not recruiting, but the operating infrastructure underneath the business, how founding teams work together, how strategy cascades into execution, how culture is designed and held as the business grows, and how leaders plan, align, coordinate, and deliver at every stage of scale. That is a distinct discipline, and it is the one most consistently missing from the portfolio support conversation. The investor case The numbers make the case clearly. McKinsey research shows companies that improve operational efficiency achieve a 20 to 30% reduction in operating costs. For a portfolio company burning $400,000 a month, a 20% reduction extends runway by months, often making the difference between reaching the next milestone and running out of capital. Studies also show operational waste consumes 20 to 30% of company revenue in startups. That is not a product problem, that is a recoverable operational problem. Apply that across a portfolio. If even a portion of the companies in the middle achieve a 20 to 30% improvement in operational efficiency, the downstream effects compound, faster milestone delivery, lower burn, stronger valuations at the next round, and greater investor confidence. In my view, a systematic operational uplift programme applied across a portfolio has the potential to deliver a 2 to 5% improvement in portfolio-wide returns over the life of a fund. Right now, 5 to 10% of the portfolio returns the fund. The question worth asking is, "What would happen to overall performance if the other 90% ran operationally better?" Where to start The right starting point is not to solve the whole portfolio at once. It is to understand what is actually happening operationally inside each company before deciding where to invest time, capital, or support. Most funds have financial data, board updates, and founder conversations. None of that tells you where the operational friction actually is, what the culture looks like from the inside, or which companies are quietly building the capability to scale and which ones are quietly drifting toward that line of despair. A portfolio-wide diagnostic changes that. It gives the GP a clear operational map across the entire portfolio, before a problem becomes a number, before a founder asks for help, and before capital has already burned. From there, the fund can make deliberate choices, double down on the companies showing strong operational foundations, intervene early where the diagnostic reveals risk, and transfer what is working from one company to the next. Build a picture of operational health that compounds every quarter. That is the starting point. Not a full platform team, not a wholesale outsourcing arrangement. A diagnostic-first approach gives the fund real visibility, costs a fraction of building internal capability, and scales without requiring the GP to choose between deal velocity and operational depth. This is the role of an operational scaling partner, not embedded full time, not a consultant parachuted in to write a report, but arms and legs alongside the founder and the investor, with a portfolio-wide view, a systematic approach to compounding what works, and the ability to transfer knowledge from one company to the next. The firms that build this capability early will have a portfolio performance edge that is genuinely hard to replicate, not because the idea is novel, but because very few funds have the discipline to act on it before the numbers force the conversation. The untapped return in most VC portfolios is not in the next deal. It is in the operational potential sitting inside the companies already funded. Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Greg Tennant Greg Tennant, Scaling Partner to Startups and Investors Greg Tennant is the scaling partner to some of the world’s most ambitious founders and senior leaders. He is the founder of andExecute, where he helps startups and scale-ups make scale work. Over the last 20 years, Greg has worked across APAC, Central Asia, EMEA, and the US, supporting growth, expansion, and operational scale across more than 20 countries. His experience spans technology startups, global corporations, and industries including automotive, energy, finance, telecommunications, retail, and hospitality. Through andExecute, Greg helps businesses stay aligned, effective, and coordinated as complexity increases. His belief is scale is not a strategy. It is a capability. References: [1] BIP Ventures [2] Pipeline Road [3] Harvard Business School

Written by Anna Hirsch-Nowak, Health & Wellness Coach, Certified Nutritionist Anna Hirsch-Nowak is a certified holistic nutritionist and holistic wellness coach. She helps clients return to balance and psychophysical well-being. She shows how to live more in tune with yourself. She is the author of the eBook “Menopause – Your Inner Power.” The modern world places unprecedented demands on us. We live in a culture of chronic rush, constant multitasking, and permanent overstimulation. Our eyes are continuously bombarded by artificial blue light, and our nervous systems face an ongoing avalanche of smartphone notifications. In this digital smog and relentless race for productivity, it is easy to lose touch with the most important thing: the natural rhythm of our own bodies. The traditional approach to health, which operates on the principle of “react only when something hurts,” is no longer enough in this day and age. More and more, we are looking for solutions that allow us to act proactively, optimize our daily energy, protect our minds from brain fog, and build a level of resilience that can weather any life storm. The answer to these searches is biohacking, a movement that is dynamically revolutionizing how we think about self-care. What exactly is biohacking? Although the name sounds futuristic and highly technological, biohacking at its deepest core is a return to the roots of biology combined with modern scientific insight. It is a holistic instruction manual for the human body. Simply put, it is a systemic and fully conscious approach to influencing the functioning of the body and mind using tools, most of which are available to us completely for free. In biohacking, we reject shortcuts and one-size-fits-all prescriptions. Here, you become an autonomous “engineer of your own health.” Your task is to test, measure, introduce subtle modifications to your daily routine, and mindfully observe what brings the best results for your unique biology. It is a profound shift from being a passive patient to becoming the active creator of your own well-being. Why is this trend revolutionizing the way we view health? The growing popularity of this movement is not a passing social media fad; it is a direct response to deep-seated, real human needs: The desire for personalization and control: General advice like “eat healthy and avoid stress” no longer satisfies us. We want to know what exactly serves our specific body. Thanks to the accessibility of advanced blood panels, gut microbiome analysis, and genetic testing, we can more precisely manage our well-being years before any symptoms of disease even manifest. The democratization of technology: Devices that a decade ago were reserved exclusively for elite athletes, aerospace laboratories, or research institutes, such as smartwatches, advanced fitness trackers, and biometric rings, are now worn on our own wrists and fingers. We have been handed powerful analytical tools. The search for alternatives and prevention: We are increasingly realizing that a prescription pill rarely removes the root cause of a problem; it merely masks the symptoms. We treat biohacking as a complement to conventional medicine, emphasizing functional medicine and the prevention of lifestyle diseases. A shift in the definition of luxury and relationships: We live in times where free time, peace of mind, and clean energy have become the ultimate luxuries. We are beginning to understand that health is not just about lab results, but also about the quality of our relationships. Biohacking also encompasses emotional hygiene, the conscious choice to walk away from toxic, energy-draining connections and surround ourselves with authentic, value-driven, and supportive people. The pillars of biohacking in practice: Your daily checklist Smart biohacking does not require completely upending your life overnight or spending a fortune. It is a strategy of small steps and building micro habits. Here is how these key pillars translate into daily action: 1. Environment and lifestyle (lifestyle hacking) Sleep architecture and circadian rhythm: Sleep is the most powerful free regenerative medicine available. Biohacking sleep means strictly respecting the rule of 7-8 hours of high-quality rest. Light management is crucial here: eliminate screens emitting blue light in the evening (or use blocking glasses) and get natural sunlight within the first 30 minutes of waking up. This programs your biological clock, giving you daytime energy and deep nighttime sleep. Hormesis, or controlled stress: Utilizing the mechanism of hormesis, a small, deliberate stress stimulus forces the body to adapt and grow stronger. In practice, this includes regular saunas (heat exposure) and cold showers or ice baths (cold exposure), which stimulate the circulatory system, activate brown adipose tissue, and build psychological resilience. Returning to nature: Daily walks (a minimum of 8,000 to 10,000 steps) are an absolute foundation. Conscious contact with nature, forest bathing (Shinrin-yoku), and grounding (walking barefoot on grass or sand) measurably lower cortisol levels, quiet an overstimulated sympathetic nervous system, and restore internal harmony. 2. Functional nutrition and supplementation (nutritional hacking) Shifting from food to nourishment: We move away from obsessive calorie counting and focus instead on nutrient density. We choose whole, clean foods rich in antioxidants, healthy fats, and fiber to feed our gut microbiome (increasingly referred to as our second brain). We implement the flexible 80/20 rule: 80% of what we eat is the highest-quality fuel, and 20% leaves room for flexibility and enjoyment without guilt. Intermittent fasting (IF): Mindful management of your eating window (e.g., 16 hours of fasting and 8 hours of eating). This break gives the digestive tract time to rest, improves insulin sensitivity, and stabilizes blood sugar levels, preventing afternoon energy crashes. Tailored supplementation: No more buying random vitamins based on television commercials. In biohacking, supplementation is guided by hard data from blood tests. It serves to fill real deficiencies (the basics being vitamin D3, omega-3s, and magnesium) and to support specific cellular functions using targeted compounds (such as curcumin, coenzyme Q10, or adaptogens that support adrenal health). 3. Movement and anti-aging for muscles Resistance (strength) training: This is an absolute priority, especially as the years go by. Working with weights counteracts sarcopenia (the natural loss of muscle mass with age) and stimulates bone density, protecting against osteoporosis. Muscles are our metabolic armor. Aerobic activity and intervals: Alternating moderate cardio (cycling, brisk walking, running) with high-intensity interval training (HIIT). This combination stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis and maintains blood vessel elasticity. 4. Mindset, breath, and information hygiene Breathwork: Tools such as box breathing or the Wim Hof method allow us to shift the autonomic nervous system in just a few minutes, extinguishing the stress response and activating the “rest and digest” mode. Information diet and affirmations: We consciously filter what we feed our minds. We limit doomscrolling through negative news, replacing it with gratitude practices and positive affirmations that actively rewire neural pathways in the brain (neuroplasticity). Biohacking and longevity The most fascinating area of biohacking is the science of longevity. However, this is understood not just as lifespan, but as healthspan: the length of life spent in full health and vitality. The goal is to be 60, 70, or 80 years old and still enjoy a capable body, a sharp mind, and a deep passion for living. At a cellular level, biohacking targets four primary mechanisms of aging, transforming how our bodies experience the passage of time: Accelerating autophagy through intermittent fasting and sugar reduction: Autophagy is the body’s natural cellular clean-up process. By reducing sugar and utilizing intermittent fasting, we trigger cells to digest and recycle damaged proteins, clearing biological debris and improving efficiency. Stimulating mitochondrial biogenesis with hormetic stress and target nutrients: Mitochondria are the powerhouses of our cells. Through stressors like saunas, cold exposure, and HIIT, alongside compounds like NAD+ and coenzyme Q10, we stimulate the creation of new mitochondria, increasing energy and slowing aging. Reducing “inflammaging” via anti-inflammatory nutrition, sleep, and stress management: Inflammaging is chronic low-grade inflammation that accelerates aging. Through a clean diet, deep sleep, and stress reduction techniques, biohacking helps reduce this internal inflammation. Proactive biomarker management through regular testing: Tracking markers such as fasting glucose, lipid profiles, and high-sensitivity CRP provides insight into internal health, allowing early correction of metabolic imbalances. Change implementation strategy: How to mindfully program new habits Understanding the theory of biohacking is only the first step. True transformation occurs when knowledge becomes daily action. For this process to be effective, it must be approached strategically. 1. The principle of micro-steps and sequencing The most common mistake is attempting to revolutionize your entire lifestyle in a single day. The body and the nervous system resist sudden, drastic changes. A far more effective strategy is to select one micro-habit to begin with. This could be optimizing your circadian rhythm by going to bed at a consistent time. Only when this practice becomes automated and a natural part of your daily routine (typically after a few weeks) will you gain the metabolic and psychological bandwidth for the next step, such as morning cold exposure in the form of a brief shower. 2. Conscious progress tracking and data collection What is not measured cannot be effectively managed. At the beginning of your journey, define your starting point (your baseline) and set the goals you wish to achieve. Tracking your progress holds both biological and psychological value. Recording even the smallest successes, whether through a dedicated app, a traditional journal, or simply checking off days on a calendar, stimulates the brain’s reward system. Seeing in black and white how far you have already come builds authentic, intrinsic motivation that will not fade after a few days. 3. Social support architecture and mentorship Human beings are relational creatures, and our environment drastically influences our choices. Implementing lifestyle changes in isolation can be incredibly challenging. Having a partner, a friend, or a community with similar goals to share mutual accountability acts as an immense accelerator for success. Furthermore, if you want to maximize efficiency and safety, consider working with a professional health coach or biohacking specialist. An expert will not only shorten your learning curve through personalized knowledge but will also serve as a steady pillar of support and inspiration when your motivation wanes. 4. Embracing the process: Consistency over perfection Forming new habits is a non-linear journey. There will be days when fatigue, stress, or unforeseen circumstances disrupt your routine. The key to long-term success is self-compassion and the rejection of perfectionism. A single setback does not undo your hard work. Real power lies in consistency and patience. It is not a few perfect days, but your predictable, everyday choices that weave these healthy habits into your identity and truly transform the quality of your life. Conclusion: What are you leaving with today? Implementing the principles of biohacking into daily life yields highly tangible, predictable results in four key areas: we gain stable and high energy levels throughout the day, deep and restorative sleep, impeccable focus, and long-term protection of our health. Biohacking has become incredibly close to my heart because it strips away the weight of helplessness. It shatters the myth that we are merely victims of our genetics or the passage of time. It proves that through daily, seemingly small decisions, we possess immense creative power and can rewrite our health blueprint with profound love and respect. Closing reflection What am I leaving with today? With the deep conviction that I do not need to be a perfect, soulless biomedical robot executing rigid protocols. I am leaving with the feeling that I am the wise, attentive, and gentle caretaker of my own body. My health is a beautiful process that I design every single day: through deep breaths, the quality of my sleep, clean food derived from nature, and the high-value people I choose to surround myself with. True biohacking doesn't start with technology; it starts with a deep respect for your own biology. Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Anna Hirsch-Nowak Anna Hirsch-Nowak, Health & Wellness Coach, Certified Nutritionist Anna Hirsch-Nowak is a certified holistic nutritionist, holistic wellness coach, and menopause coach. She helps clients return to balance and psychophysical well-being. She is a guide and partner for her clients. She helps them identify their needs and accompanies them on their journey toward improving their lifestyle and wellness. She is the author of the eBook “Menopause – Your Inner Power.” She is currently a student at the FMCA Academy. Her mission is to help people draw health from the connection of body, spirit, and mind.

Written by Leah Williams, President & Owner, Licensed Massage Therapist Leah Williams specializing in Lymphatic drainage, imparting knowledge and expertise in Somatic release. President and Owner of Lymphatic Somatic Massage by Leah. Licensed Massage Therapist for over 25 years. We are 75 percent water, 25 percent dry mass, 50 percent spiritual beings, and 50 percent physical beings. These are also a map to the layout of our universe. We are lymphatic fluid, bones, and flesh, spirit, soul, and body. Have you ever seen a Russian or Japanese nesting doll? Imagine you have a total of seven, and you remove them one by one, they reveal themselves smaller and smaller. Let's take a closer look. The first, largest outer doll is hollow. Though larger than the rest, it is the weakest. In contrast, the seventh, smallest doll is dense, solid wood and stronger. All the dolls are built around the central hard core. The seminal fluid flows (water), the positive and negative charge (masculine and feminine) unite the spirit and soul. The heartbeat links the flesh and spirit. Water permeates them all. Liquid, solid, gas, and vapor are all water. Our bodies produce water in all its forms. That first, largest hollow doll is the physical being. We could literally set it aside and fill it with water and rocks. The seventh, smallest doll is the spiritual God of gods, God of the spirit, an angelic and physical being in all its diversity, density, forms, and intensity. The universe God Himself is gas. He encompasses heaven and earth. But we are not inside of Him, He is only inside of the sixth doll, the spirit (Sophia), second heaven. The sixth doll is inside of the fifth doll, third heaven, and so on, becoming more and more hollow until reaching the flesh, the human being. Since the God of the universe is gas, water in one of its many forms, our outer vapor, our auric field, is able to link directly to God, like a kind of Bluetooth or internet of things. “As above, so below,” “nothing new under the sun.” To heal, we must not lose our connection to the spiritual Godhead. Our lymphatic system must stay connected to the gas that permeates our outer vapor, our aura. Now let's review in reverse. The first wooden doll, the largest, is also the weakest (matter). The smallest solid wooden doll is the strongest (gas). Humanity in flesh, we are vulnerable and destructible. Together as a unit, we are hollow, numbering in the billions. Yet filled with vegetation, sea, and land, and large amounts of water and vapor. As we move outward into Earth's atmosphere, Earth is not only the plane on which we find land and sea, but also its atmosphere, water in all its forms, liquid, solid, gas, and vapor combined. Take the ocean, for example. The deeper you dive, whether it is night or day, the light disappears, and it becomes more gas. The pressure builds, pushes, and squeezes. That same process is repeated in the other direction toward heaven. Where only the spirit can move, either beneath the ocean or beyond the stars, we find the gas, that dense wooden doll, the center piece of wood from which the remaining dolls were carved. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Leah Williams Leah Williams, President & Owner, Licensed Massage Therapist Leah Williams pioneering lymphatic drainage on deeper levels brings awareness to the connection between the water of our lymph systems, our auric field, and our Soma. In her mid-thirties, over a decade ago, her own personal health challenges led her to research the lymphatic system, which in turn she merged that understanding into her massage practice. While on that journey after witnessing Somatic release in clients, she discovered her Soma. Once an orthodox monotheist instructor, she now understands the ancient traditions of cultures around the world and their contributions towards the path of rediscovering the Authentic Human and our ability to heal from within, with the help of Creation's Energy.