Written by Cathy Levin, Transformational Life Coach & Autism Advocate Cathy Levin is a transformational life coach, entrepreneur, speaker, and autism advocate who helps women rebuild their lives, relationships, and confidence after adversity. Drawing on lived experience, business leadership, and parenting an autistic child, she writes about personal growth, resilience, relationships, and autism. A person can practice something successfully in a quiet room and still struggle when the environment changes. Real life is noisy, unpredictable, fast, bright, crowded, and full of strangers, waiting, transitions, social rules, competing sounds, unexpected changes, and people who may not understand autism. That is why I believe autism support cannot end with teaching a skill. There also needs to be a bridge between learning and living. Real life is where independence becomes meaningful Think about the skills many families hope their children will develop, ordering food, shopping, waiting in line, crossing a street safely, participating in a class, entering a workplace, asking for help, handling money, interacting with unfamiliar people, and managing a change in plans. These are not abstract goals. They happen in communities. A person may understand how to complete a task in a familiar therapeutic environment but experience the actual coffee shop, store, gym, or community center very differently. That does not mean the skill was not learned. It means the environment added another layer. Practice should include context Learning becomes stronger when people have safe opportunities to apply skills in realistic situations. You can explain how to order something, then practice it, and then practice again when the restaurant is louder, when the preferred item is unavailable, or when someone asks an unexpected question. This approach is not unique to autism. Most people become confident through experience. We rehearse presentations, practice driving, train for jobs, and role-play difficult conversations. Autistic people deserve opportunities to build real-world confidence in the same way, with support that respects their individual pace. But society needs practice too There is another side to this. If the autistic person is learning how to navigate the community, the community can learn how to interact with autism. Imagine if more customer-facing employees understood that a delayed response does not necessarily mean someone is ignoring them. Imagine if coaches understood sensory overload. Imagine if activity leaders knew that one person’s regulation strategy may look different. Imagine if businesses became more comfortable giving someone an extra moment rather than immediately becoming impatient. That is inclusion. Not perfection. Not creating a silent world with no challenges. Simply increasing understanding enough that differences do not automatically become exclusion. Dignity should remain at the center There is a temptation in skill-building to focus so heavily on performance that dignity becomes secondary. Did they complete the task? Did they follow the expected steps? Did they behave appropriately? Those questions can matter. But we should also ask, "Did the person feel respected? Were they given enough time? Were expectations explained clearly? Were sensory needs considered? Were they included in decisions affecting them? Were strengths recognized as intentionally as difficulties?" Independence built through humiliation is not the kind of independence we should be aiming for. Confidence comes from successful participation There is a difference between doing something because someone is directing every step and gradually realizing, I can do this. That moment matters. It might happen through something that appears small to another person, making a purchase, completing a community activity, communicating with a new person, or navigating part of a routine more independently. But independence is built from these pieces. Confidence grows when those pieces become part of ordinary life. Inclusion benefits everyone Better autism awareness does not help only autistic people. Clear communication helps many people. Sensory-aware spaces can help people with anxiety, trauma, neurological differences, disabilities, or temporary overwhelm. More patient customer service helps older adults. Flexible communication helps people who speak different languages. Greater acceptance of different social styles helps communities become less rigid overall. Inclusion often begins with one group and expands the humanity of the entire environment. We should measure more than compliance When we think about real-world success, I hope we widen the questions. Not only, "Did the person follow the expected behaviour?" But also, "Did they participate? Did they communicate? Did they gain confidence? Did they build independence? Did the environment learn anything? Did the interaction preserve dignity?" Those are meaningful outcomes. The purpose of autism support should not be to make someone invisible by teaching them to look like everyone else. It should help them build the tools to participate in life while allowing life to become more capable of including them. That is the future of inclusion I want to see. Not one-sided adaptation. Shared learning. Call to action To explore Cathy Levin's work in transformation, speaking, coaching, and autism advocacy, visit here. Follow me on Instagram for more info! Read more from Cathy Levin Cathy Levin, Transformational Life Coach & Autism Advocate Cathy Levin is a transformational life coach, entrepreneur, speaker, and autism advocate whose work centers on transformation, relationships, resilience, and human connection. Her approach goes beyond insight, she believes transformation happens when we practice new ways of thinking, relating, and living. Through her work in personal growth and autism advocacy, Cathy challenges people to see themselves and others from a deeper perspective. Her mission is to help people transform adversity into purpose and create meaningful change from the inside out.

Written by Cathy Levin, Transformational Life Coach & Autism Advocate Cathy Levin is a transformational life coach, entrepreneur, speaker, and autism advocate who helps women rebuild their lives, relationships, and confidence after adversity. Drawing on lived experience, business leadership, and parenting an autistic child, she writes about personal growth, resilience, relationships, and autism. I used to think strength was something you either had or did not have. Then life taught me otherwise. Strength can be built in rooms you never wanted to enter, in circumstances you would never have chosen, through loss, fear, motherhood, business uncertainty, relationships, health challenges, starting again, advocating for someone you love, and moments when there is no perfect answer and you have to make the next decision anyway. But adversity by itself does not make someone wise. The transformation happens in what we choose to do with it. Pain is an experience, not a qualification People sometimes romanticize hardship, as though suffering automatically makes someone stronger, kinder, or more capable. It does not. Pain can make people guarded, bitter, fearful, and disconnected. Adversity becomes meaningful when we consciously process it and ask, "What did this teach me? What did it expose? What boundaries did I need? What strength did I discover? What do I understand now that I did not understand before? What would I do differently?" That reflection is what begins converting experience into wisdom. Leadership begins with self-leadership Before we lead teams, businesses, families, communities, or audiences, we lead ourselves. Can you make a difficult decision without abandoning your values? Can you remain accountable when things go wrong? Can you manage your emotions without making everyone around you responsible for them? Can you change direction when evidence tells you something is not working? Can you maintain standards without losing compassion? Can you admit you do not know? These are leadership skills, and difficult life experiences can create opportunities to practice every one of them. Adversity can increase your range Someone who has known uncertainty may lead differently through uncertainty. Someone who has had to rebuild may understand reinvention. Someone who has had to advocate for a child may understand persistence. Someone who has experienced being unheard may become more intentional about listening. Someone who has rebuilt confidence after a difficult relationship may recognize how damaging it is when people lose their voice. Your experiences can expand the number of people you are able to understand, and that emotional range matters in leadership. Your story should become a bridge, not the destination Personal stories can be powerful, but leadership is not simply telling people what happened to you. The value is helping another person find something useful inside your experience. A story becomes service when the listener can say, "That helped me understand my own life," "That gave me language for something I could not explain," "That showed me another possibility," or "That helped me make a decision." The goal is not to remain the central character forever. The goal is to use your experience as a bridge. Resilience is not pretending nothing hurts Some of the strongest leaders I respect are not people who appear invulnerable. They are people who can acknowledge reality without surrendering responsibility. They can say, "This is difficult. I am affected. I need support. I am still going to decide what happens next." That kind of resilience feels more honest to me than performing constant strength. You do not have to deny pain to demonstrate leadership. You need the ability to keep choosing intentionally inside it. Purpose can emerge from patterns Sometimes purpose does not arrive as a dramatic calling. It emerges when you look backward and notice the pattern. What experiences keep shaping you? What problems are you naturally drawn to solving? What do people repeatedly ask you for help with? What injustice, challenge, or possibility do you find difficult to ignore? What have you learned the hard way that could shorten someone else's learning curve? Purpose often lives at the intersection of experience, ability, values, and service. Do not waste the chapter by staying inside it There comes a moment when telling the story is not enough. You have to build something with what you learned. A new standard. A business. A message. A healthier family pattern. A community. A book. A conversation. A boundary. A different way of leading. You do not honor adversity by suffering forever. You can honor it by refusing to let the lesson disappear. Your next chapter can carry the wisdom without carrying the weight You are allowed to build from what happened without continuing to live emotionally inside it. You can keep the courage. Release the chaos. Keep the wisdom. Release the shame. Keep the discernment. Release the fear. Keep the compassion. Release the identity of being permanently broken by the experience. That is one of the deepest forms of transformation I know. The chapter that nearly broke you does not have to become the end of your story. Sometimes it becomes the chapter that teaches you how to lead the rest of it. Call to action For speaking engagements and one-on-one coaching with Cathy Levin on transformation, resilience, women's empowerment, leadership, relationships, and purpose, visit here. Follow me on Instagram for more info! Read more from Cathy Levin Cathy Levin, Transformational Life Coach & Autism Advocate Cathy Levin is a transformational life coach, entrepreneur, speaker, and autism advocate whose work centers on transformation, relationships, resilience, and human connection. Her approach goes beyond insight, she believes transformation happens when we practice new ways of thinking, relating, and living. Through her work in personal growth and autism advocacy, Cathy challenges people to see themselves and others from a deeper perspective. Her mission is to help people transform adversity into purpose and create meaningful change from the inside out.

Written by Dr. Galia BarHava, Founder of Oro Group Dr. Galia BarHava is an applied developmental psychologist, organisational culture and mentoring expert, and founder of Oro Group. Drawing on more than 30 years of experience and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in person-centred healthcare, she explores how relationships shape leadership, careers and organisational performance. As organisations race to develop their employees' AI capabilities, I’ve observed that many of them are overlooking an equally important priority: investing in the relationships between the people using these technologies. AI promises extraordinary gains in individual productivity, but organisational success has never depended on individual capability alone. Drawing on my background in developmental psychology, strategic consulting and more than a decade of designing mentoring programmes, I believe the organisations that thrive in the age of AI will be those that invest just as deliberately in human relationships as they do in technology. The human side of organisational success I have dedicated a significant portion of my professional life to understanding and fostering high-quality mentoring. Interestingly, it was never part of my grand career plan. I arrived here almost by accident. When I was working for the Boston Consulting Group, perhaps as a result of my psychology training, I was always curious about the way humans operated in organisations. Initially implicitly, and later much more explicitly, I became fascinated by the extent to which leaders, when thinking about strategy and commercial success, often passed over the importance of building relationships in the workplace. We spend enormous amounts of time thinking about strategy, organisational structures, systems, processes and performance. Yet the relationships between the people expected to make all those things work are frequently treated as incidental, a sort of ‘necessary evil’ that will sort itself out if we just leave people to get on with their appropriately defined jobs. When I eventually established Oro Group, a significant part of my work became dedicated to creating effective mentoring relationships within organisations. I remember being challenged, particularly by men working in the technology sector, about why my approach was so centred on people. Why wasn't I focusing more on technological solutions that could be scaled more easily? This was long before the explosion of AI into the commercial world. My response then was much the same as it is today. Human beings develop through relationships and over time. We are social beings who learn about ourselves and the world around us through interacting with others. We observe, listen, question, try things, receive feedback (which we might take on board or not), and gradually and quite reluctantly change the way we think and behave. Change is hard. Most people don’t like change. Of all organisational interventions I have encountered and delivered, the fostering of high-quality workplace relationships is the most powerful in enabling us to discover strengths we didn't know we had, recognise blind spots that were previously invisible to us, and develop the confidence to do things we might never have attempted on our own. In short, it is the most impactful means of achieving actual and sustainable behaviour change. Some of our most significant moments of professional growth come not from being given more information, but from a conversation that helps us see something differently. That brings me to something that has been troubling me about the current enthusiasm for artificial intelligence. As AI makes us more productive individually, are we getting worse collectively? Let me be clear. I am an avid user of AI. I use it regularly to challenge and enhance my thinking, explore ideas and make aspects of my work considerably more efficient. I am genuinely excited by its possibilities and believe organisations have every reason to invest in helping their people understand and use these technologies effectively. But I am increasingly concerned about what we might be overlooking in the process. Almost every organisation I encounter is thinking about AI adoption, capability building and the productivity gains these technologies might deliver. There is considerable urgency to ensure employees have the skills to use AI effectively, alongside understandable excitement about the potential efficiencies. What I hear far less about is an equally deliberate investment in strengthening the relationships between those employees. Organisational performance depends on much more than the capability of the individuals within it. It depends on their ability to share knowledge, build trust, collaborate across boundaries, challenge one another constructively and navigate differences in opinion. Much of that capability is relational and comes down to having better conversations. It might seem obvious, but high-quality conversations are actually quite rare in most workplaces. We may be becoming extraordinarily effective at helping individuals work faster. But without paying enough attention to what makes groups work better together, we risk significant unintended consequences. What two decades of mentoring have taught me about human development For two decades, I have designed and facilitated structured mentoring programmes that have supported more than a thousand professionals, predominantly women, across a range of industries, organisations and countries. My experience has taught me that meaningful professional relationships don't necessarily develop simply because we put people together in the same room, or even on the same team, they require careful consideration and the intent to create the conditions in which those relationships can flourish. It takes deliberate intent over an extended period to encourage employees to move beyond discussing what they do at work and to take a ‘helicopter view’ to reflect on how they think, what they believe, the challenges they face, and the possibilities they may not have considered. Establishing trust and psychological safety requires effort, but it is necessary for employees to feel able to ask difficult questions, acknowledge uncertainty, seek feedback, take risks, experiment, and challenge how things have always been done. These are all things we need to operate successfully and sustainably in this new world infused with AI. Why real development takes time In recent years, I have also been following up with participants from earlier mentoring cohorts, including women who began as mentees and subsequently became mentors themselves. I am particularly interested in understanding what stays with people long after the formal mentoring programme has finished. What have they actually changed? How has their approach to leadership evolved? What role have the relationships played in that process? One woman I interviewed had been involved in the programme over four years, first as a mentee and subsequently as a mentor. She described how her earliest mentors helped her navigate a difficult organisational period, regain confidence and discover that leadership could look very different from the models she had previously encountered. As she became a mentor herself, she continued to learn through her relationships with other leaders, including one whose approach to building relationships and challenging people was very different from her own. Reflecting on that experience, she told me, “That taught me to come from a place of curiosity rather than judgement.” People don’t change simply because they have attended a workshop, completed a course or acquired new information. They change when they can engage deeply with other humans who can both challenge and validate their experiences, because knowing what good leadership looks like is not the same as becoming a better leader. While AI can undoubtedly help us access information, prepare for difficult conversations and reflect on our experiences, we still have to navigate the complexities of real human relationships to develop our leadership capability. Relationships are an organisational capability, not an optional extra The strategic importance of workplace relationships is hardly a new discovery. Gallup's extensive research into workplace friendships has consistently demonstrated a strong connection between relationships and organisational outcomes. Employees who report having a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged, and Gallup's research associates stronger workplace friendships with better quality of work, safety and business performance. Similarly, Amy Edmondson's research into psychological safety and team learning has helped demonstrate why people's willingness to speak up, admit mistakes, challenge assumptions and take interpersonal risks matters for collective learning and performance. Yet despite what we know, relationship building is still frequently positioned as a secondary organisational activity, something we encourage when there is enough time, rather than being recognised as part of the infrastructure that enables performance. In my experience, relationships influence much more than employees' sense of belonging. They affect how readily people share crucial information and collaborate across silos. The quality of the relationship determines whether feedback is welcomed or avoided, and whether people feel able to challenge decisions they believe are wrong. In short, relationship quality shapes an organisation's culture. Building that relational capability requires intentionality. It requires leaders who understand that developing people is part of their role, organisational practices that support connection across hierarchies and functions, and opportunities for relationships to deepen over time. Mentoring is one way of doing this, but certainly not the only way. What matters is recognising that creating the conditions for people to build high-quality relationships is itself a strategic investment. An unintended consequence of AI that deserves more attention I wonder whether one of the unintended consequences of making employees increasingly technologically self-sufficient might be that we inadvertently reduce some of the everyday interactions through which relationships and informal learning develop. If I can get a confident answer from AI in seconds, am I less likely to turn to a colleague who might need to ponder my question for a while? If I can solve a problem independently, will I still seek out a different perspective? If organisations become increasingly focused on individual productivity, will they recognise the value of the time people spend getting to know one another, exchanging ideas or simply having a conversation that isn't immediately related to a task? I am not suggesting that we should preserve unnecessary interactions simply for the sake of human contact (I hate the endless meetings culture). Nor do I think technology and human connection are mutually exclusive. Used thoughtfully, AI may actually free us from routine tasks and create more opportunities for the conversations and relationships that matter. But that outcome won't necessarily happen by itself. We need to be deliberate about what we do with the time and capacity technology creates, and equally deliberate about the workplace cultures we are building alongside it. There is a difference between an organisation in which everyone has become more efficient at completing their individual tasks and one in which people have become more capable of thinking, learning, working and growing together. The question leaders should be asking alongside their AI strategy I believe the organisations that will thrive in the future will be those that find the right balance between developing their people's technological capabilities and creating environments in which authentic, trusting and psychologically safe relationships can flourish. This means recognising that relationship building is not a distraction from productive work. It is frequently what makes sustained performance, effective collaboration and organisational learning possible. It also means being prepared to invest time, resources and leadership attention in the conditions that support meaningful professional relationships, with the same seriousness that organisations currently bring to their investment in technology. As leaders consider how to build a workforce capable of using AI, I would encourage them to ask an equally important question: are we also building a workforce that is genuinely capable of learning, growing and succeeding together? Because ultimately, the future of work will not be shaped by technology alone. It will also be shaped by the quality of the relationships between the people using it. Those relationships are far too important to leave to chance. If you're exploring how to strengthen leadership capability, mentoring and organisational culture alongside technological change, you can explore my work and approach here. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Dr. Galia BarHava Dr. Galia BarHava, Founder of Oro Group Dr. Galia BarHava is an applied developmental psychologist and expert in organisational culture and mentoring, with more than 30 years’ experience working with leaders and organisations. Her experience of a rare, life-threatening autoimmune illness inspired her PhD research into person-centred healthcare and deepened her understanding of the role relationships play in human development. As founder of Oro Group, she draws on positive psychology, positive organisational scholarship and both entrepreneurial and corporate experience to question conventional approaches to leadership and organisational change. Her work makes visible the often-overlooked human dynamics that shape careers, culture and commercial success.

Written by Kimberlli Walker, Founder of KIMI Consulting Kimberlli Walker, founder of KIMI Consulting, coaches nonprofit leaders, staff, and boards to fundraise with confidence. With 30+ years of leadership, she leads donor development at a Bay Area community foundation, managing $1K-$200K+ gift portfolios and $500K+ sponsorships. Her approach blends data, process rigor, and storytelling. A nonprofit fundraiser can become remarkably successful by adopting a beehive's organizational structure, collaboration, communication, and collective purpose. The central lesson of a beehive is simple, "No single bee makes the honey. The entire colony contributes to its creation." This is a powerful model for nonprofit fundraising because sustainable fundraising is not the responsibility of one development director. It is the collective work of an entire organization and its community. 1. The queen bee: Mission leadership The queen bee plays a central reproductive role in sustaining the colony. In nonprofit fundraising, the equivalent is the organization's mission and leadership, which provide continuity and direction. A successful nonprofit needs a compelling mission that inspires people to participate. Fundraising application: The executive director and board communicate a shared vision, build trust, and help everyone understand what their contributions make possible. 2. Worker bees: Staff, board members, and volunteers Worker bees perform different jobs throughout their lives, including maintaining the hive, caring for young, gathering resources, and protecting the colony. Similarly, nonprofit fundraising succeeds when responsibilities are distributed. Development staff cultivate donors and coordinate campaigns. Board members open doors to relationships and resources. Program staff share stories demonstrating impact. Volunteers organize events and engage the community. Communications staff amplify the mission. Fundraising application: Build a culture where everyone contributes to fundraising based on their strengths, rather than expecting everyone to solicit donations. 3. Forager bees: Relationship builders Forager bees leave the hive to find nectar and pollen, then return with resources that sustain the colony. In nonprofit fundraising, foragers build relationships beyond the organization. They identify potential supporters, establish partnerships, engage corporations, and connect with foundations. Fundraising application: Create a network of fundraising ambassadors who continually introduce new individuals and organizations to the mission. 4. The waggle dance: Communication and intelligence One of the most fascinating aspects of a beehive is the waggle dance. Honeybees use this movement to communicate the direction and distance to valuable food sources. Imagine applying that principle to fundraising! When a board member discovers a potential corporate sponsor, they should share that intelligence. When a development officer learns what motivates a donor, they should use that information to guide future engagement. Fundraising application: Establish regular fundraising huddles where staff and board members exchange information about opportunities, relationships, successes, and challenges. The goal is to create an organization where valuable knowledge circulates rather than staying with one person. 5. The honeycomb: Systems and infrastructure A honeycomb consists of interconnected hexagonal cells that provide efficient storage and structural support. For nonprofits, the honeycomb represents the systems that make fundraising sustainable. These include donor databases, stewardship plans, fundraising calendars, gift processing, financial accountability, and impact reporting. Fundraising application: Build dependable systems so relationships and institutional knowledge survive staff transitions. 6. Pollination: Community impact Here is where the beehive analogy becomes especially powerful. Bees don't just collect nectar. As they move between flowers, they also pollinate plants, supporting the broader ecosystem. Likewise, effective fundraising should create benefits beyond the organization itself. For example, a nonprofit working on affordable housing might bring together developers, local businesses, government agencies, philanthropists, and community residents. These partnerships can create new housing opportunities, stronger public policies, and greater community investment. Fundraising application: Measure success not only by dollars raised but also by the relationships, opportunities, and community benefits created along the way. Turning the beehive into a fundraising strategy Consider a nonprofit with an annual fundraising goal of $500,000. Illustrative fundraising goal: $500,000 Major donors: $200,000, 40% Corporate partnerships: $150,000, 30% Community giving: $100,000, 20% Fundraising events: $50,000, 10% Actual targets should reflect donor history, organizational capacity, and fundraising costs. The beehive approach would assign a coordinated team to each revenue stream, with shared responsibility for introductions, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship. 5 principles for a successful fundraising hive Collective purpose: Everyone understands the mission and why financial support matters. Division of labor: People contribute according to their abilities, relationships, and expertise. Continuous communication: Share opportunities and donor intelligence responsibly. Mutual sustainability: The organization values and supports donors, staff, volunteers, and community partners. Shared prosperity: Fundraising success strengthens the organization and the broader community. The most important lesson: Don't just collect honey, grow the garden A nonprofit that focuses only on collecting donations may meet its annual goal but struggle to sustain relationships. A nonprofit that cultivates an ecosystem of supporters can develop lasting partnerships, recurring donations, community advocates, and new opportunities. The beehive provides a useful distinction: Transactional fundraising asks, "How much honey can we collect?" Transformational fundraising asks, "How can we build an ecosystem that continues to flourish?" For a nonprofit development director, this changes the leadership role from being the organization's primary fundraiser to becoming the architect of a collaborative fundraising ecosystem. Here's a question worth exploring: What if a nonprofit organized its entire development department around the functions of a beehive, creating a fundraising model called The Hive, with defined roles for board members, donors, staff, volunteers, and corporate partners? That could become a distinctive framework for fundraising strategy, board engagement, and organizational development. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Kimberlli Walker Kimberlli Walker, Founder of KIMI Consulting Kimberlli’s coaching pairs proven philanthropic frameworks with relationship-centered work to build fundraising confidence. She helps clients map donors through the giving pipeline using moves management, qualify prospects with the LAI model, and set goals and track progress with CRM data and sector benchmarks. She also uses Motivational Interviewing, money-story and mindset coaching, storytelling, and rapid 90- to 120-day improvement cycles (PDSA) to help fundraisers ask with authenticity and test campaigns.

Written by Aleksandra Di Gesaro, Fashion Photographer & Visual Strategist Aleksandra Di Gesaro is a fashion photographer and visual strategist with over 15 years of experience helping fashion and beauty brands build identities that convert. She specializes in authentic fashion marketing that creates real human connection, not just beautiful imagery. You are losing money every single day, and you don’t realise it. You have a gap between the results you promise your clients and what your photos and videos actually show them. What you need to remember is that your visuals speak before your words do, so when they show something different from your offer, the right client scrolls past without ever reading what you do. To see how big the gap between visual representation and your brand promise can get, I spent three months auditing a famous founder and a product nobody else makes: Sneex, the comfortable high-heel brand from Spanx creator Sara Blakely. By my calculations, it reaches only about 0.6% of the 6.3 million American women who could realistically buy it, and reaching just 1% would nearly double its estimated $18 million in annual revenue. Here’s how to make sure the same does not happen to your brand. Why does your visual marketing get likes but no clients? If you’ve ever posted regularly for months and still wondered where the clients are, this will sound familiar. People follow you and like your posts, but nobody writes to ask about working with you. Your engagement stays flat no matter how consistent you are. Clients who have seen your content still can’t tell what makes you different, and the ones who do get in touch compare you with everyone else in your industry and, quite often, choose on price. All these symptoms come from the same place: a gap between what you promise and what your visual communication shows. Your visuals are not just a pretty decoration on your profile and website: they send a message before anyone reads a word of your caption, and when that message differs from your offer, the client you want quietly scrolls past. This gap usually shows up in three ways: Your visual content never talks about the most important thing you offer. It ignores what your clients actually search for. It copies the giants of your industry instead of owning a niche of your own. I saw the first one recently while auditing the social media of a coach who teaches women how to lead at work and get promoted inside corporate structures. She works from home, so in nearly every photo she’s alone in her living room. Each picture is lovely, yet together they say: I’m sitting at home talking about a world I’m not part of. Her clients spend their days in open offices and performance reviews, so a visitor scanning her profile can easily decide she doesn’t know their world, however well she actually does. You can check my whole analysis, where I break down why Sasha had low conversion rates and how to show your expertise to attract the perfect-fit clients. To test the theory on something bigger than one coach’s feed, I chose Sneex as a case study. It’s the second brand from Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, and its promise couldn’t be clearer. In her words, Sneex is a “love letter to every woman who has taken her shoes off at a party, who wears flats to work with heels in her bag, who thought her days of wearing heels were over.” The promise is comfort, so I tracked Instagram and the newsletter from December 2025 to February 2026 to see how much of the content actually says so. Let’s see how the case study confirms each of the three problems. What your visuals should say but never do The first sign of the gap is content that rarely mentions the most important thing that distinguishes what you offer from everything else, and Sneex shows it perfectly. During the three months of my audit, its Instagram posts contained 38 fashion mentions and only 9 about comfort, while its newsletter contained 22 fashion mentions and 12 about comfort. Most of those nine comfort mentions were written for people who already know the brand, so a woman discovering Sneex hardly meets the one thing that makes the shoes special. Even the Instagram bio introduces a luxury hybrid stiletto and leaves comfort out, which means the fashion brand identity customers actually see is built around style, not around the promise of comfortable high heels. I understand how it happened: many people called the shoes ugly at launch (and I won’t lie, my own first reaction was hesitant). Leaning into fashion looked like the safe move, because that’s how footwear brands usually present themselves. The price of that choice shows in the numbers. Sneex has more than 94,000 Instagram followers, yet its engagement rate is 0.11%, according to TrendHERO, while Socialinsider’s benchmark studies put accounts of this size at 1.5 to 3%. In practice, only around 80 people react to a typical post, so a brand with a legendary founder performs at less than a tenth of the typical rate. All because they copy what everyone else in the industry is doing instead of showcasing their strengths. Your turn: look at your last 30 posts and count how many show or prove the main result you promise to clients (backgrounds and settings count too). If the answer is a handful, you have the same gap. Your visual communication ignores what clients search The second sign is visuals that don’t show the very thing your clients are actively looking for. Sneex stands out because of comfort, and comfort happens to be exactly what women are typing into Google. According to Google Trends in the US, searches for “fashionable high heels” and “stylish high heels” sit near zero almost every week of the year, while “comfortable high heels” and “comfortable heels for women” average scores of 38 and 56, and both hit the maximum of 100 in April 2026. The comfortable version gets around 50,000 searches a month against about 1,000 for the stylish one, and every top related query is about comfort, such as “most comfortable heels” and “comfortable work heels”. This shows that a huge number of women are already looking for what Sneex sells, so the demand exists and is waiting. Yet the brand presents its shoes as a stylish, fashionable heel, so a woman who lands on the account sees an answer to a different search than the one she typed. She keeps looking, and Sneex loses all those clients who wanted exactly what it makes. Your clients are searching for something too, and your images either show it or they don’t. Imagine a business consultant whose clients Google “how to run a team meeting that doesn’t waste time”, while her feed is full of styled desk photos and inspirational quotes. The need is practical, the pictures promise a lifestyle, and a client looking for a solution doesn’t recognise it. Type the problem you solve into Google, write down what people search for, and then scroll through your last nine posts as if you were a stranger: do the images show that solution, or something else entirely? Why copying giants kills successful marketing The third sign is looking like everyone else in your industry. By presenting itself as a fashion heel, Sneex steps into the ring with Louboutin, Jimmy Choo and trend-driven labels like Amina Muaddi, whose prices overlap with its own. On prestige and trend authority, a young brand loses big time, because those rules were written by companies with decades of head start. On comfort at $400 to $600 a pair, there’s no established competitor at all, and nobody owns “comfortable high heels” as a category. Sara knows this better than anyone, since she built Spanx by naming a problem women had and owning the solution instead of competing with shapewear on aesthetics. Now she should do the same with Sneex. A consultant who posts the same bright quote cards as everyone else in the niche, hoping to look professional, ends up in the same trap: nothing in her feed says why to choose her, so clients compare prices. Successful marketing starts with asking what your industry never shows, and whether that happens to be your biggest strength. When you show it, you stop being one of many and become the obvious choice for the clients who need exactly that. Test your visual marketing in 15 minutes The three signs add up to a simple test I do anytime I audit a brand. Whether you are a brand owner, a consultant or a coach, you can run it on your own content today to understand where your content is not speaking clearly about your brand promise and may be costing you potential clients. Open your Instagram grid, or wherever your content lives, and look at your last nine posts as if you were a stranger who has never heard of you. For each image, ask three questions: Does it show the result I promise my clients? Does it show the problem my clients actually type into Google? Does it show something my competitors never show? An image that gets no yeses is decoration, and a feed full of decoration is exactly what produces likes without clients. The pattern in your answers tells you what to fix first. Mostly no on the first question means your promise is invisible (that was the coach in her living room). Mostly no on the second means your pictures are just decoration and don’t do the work of speaking to your ideal client or showing how you can solve their problem, and mostly no on the third means you blend in with your industry. Pick the question you failed most often and make your next post an image that answers it, because one clear image will tell you more than another month of posting the usual things. Want visual marketing that brings clients? If the test showed you where your images fall short, the rest of the Sneex case study goes deeper. It’s a series on Empowering Lens, my Substack about visual marketing for brands that compete for attention, and this article is its first part. In the next parts, I show how I calculated those 6.3 million women (and how you can run the same math for your own audience), why photography that converts looks nothing like a typical fashion shoot, and how casting decides whether your client stops scrolling. You can read the whole series and subscribe for free here so you can increase your engagement and create more sales using your visual marketing. Visit my Substack for more info and follow me on Instagram! Read more from Aleksandra Di Gesaro Aleksandra Di Gesaro, Fashion Photographer & Visual Strategist Aleksandra Di Gesaro is a fashion photographer and visual communication strategist based in Italy, with over 15 years of experience in the fashion industry. She has collaborated with brands including MAC Cosmetics, shot Milan Fashion Week, and directed short films recognized at the Aphelion Film Festival. She specializes in helping founder-led fashion and beauty brands move beyond polished, forgettable imagery toward visual communication that speaks directly to their ideal customer and converts.

Written by Sheryl Raphael Whitaker, Founder & CEO Sheryl Raphael Whitaker is a leadership transformation expert, founder and CEO of EdenAnthony LLC, and author of It Starts with Joy. With 35+ years spanning Fortune 100 and executive leadership, she helps organizations strengthen the human foundations that lasting excellence is built on. There is a particular kind of leadership meeting where everyone is pleasant, nobody says anything especially difficult, and the real conversation happens afterward. The concern comes out in a hallway, a private message, or a conversation with someone who cannot actually resolve it. Meanwhile, the person who most needs to hear it leaves believing everything is fine. We can call that keeping the peace. But whose peace are we keeping, and who is paying for it? In my work, I call this respectful avoidance: withholding the honest thing in the name of being polite, professional, or considerate. It can look remarkably like care. The difference becomes clear when we ask whether our silence serves the other person's growth or protects us from an uncomfortable moment. What niceness can cost the people we lead There is nothing wrong with being pleasant. I am not suggesting that leaders need to become harder, sharper, or more intimidating to be effective. Most workplaces do not need another person confusing bluntness with bravery. The trouble begins when being liked becomes more important than being useful. We praise someone's potential while avoiding the behavior that is limiting it. We keep correcting work ourselves instead of explaining what needs to change. We reassure a team that a decision is settled, then quietly allow it to be reopened because holding the line might disappoint someone. The immediate conversation stays comfortable, but the work gets harder. Colleagues compensate for a problem nobody has named. Expectations become something people have to guess at. Eventually, a person may receive feedback about a serious performance concern that could have been addressed much earlier, when there was more room to learn. That is a steep price for a pleasant exchange. When we withhold useful truth, we also withhold someone's opportunity to respond to it. I have needed the kind truth too Years ago, I asked a leader I trusted for feedback. She initially told me I was doing great, but I pushed a little further and asked about a blind spot. Her answer was, “You're awfully self-sufficient.” I was proud of being someone my leader did not have to worry about. If I said I could handle something, I wanted her to know I meant it. What I had not fully understood was that always being able to handle it could also keep me from letting anyone help me. She saw something that praise alone would not have helped me see. The feedback did not erase my capability, it asked me to examine how I was using it. That is the kind of care I want us to practice as leaders. We can appreciate a person's strengths and still help them recognize where a familiar way of operating has become a limitation. Challenge with care begins before you speak The alternative to respectful avoidance is not an unfiltered opinion. It is a conversation prepared with enough care that the other person has a fair chance to understand you, disagree with you, and participate in what happens next. Start by getting honest about your intention. Are you trying to help, clarify an expectation, or address an impact on the team? Or have you waited so long that what you really want is relief from your frustration? If it is the latter, give yourself time to settle before you turn accumulated resentment into somebody else's feedback. Then separate what you observed from the story you have attached to it. “You don't respect the team” is a conclusion about someone. “In our last two meetings, you interrupted before your colleague finished explaining her recommendation” gives both of you something specific to examine. Explain the impact without pretending you know the person's motives, then ask what you may be missing. The question matters only if you are willing to hear the answer. Perhaps you misunderstood. Perhaps an expectation was never clear. Perhaps there is a problem you still need to address. Listening is how you find out, not a courtesy you perform before returning to your original verdict. Before the conversation ends, agree on what happens next. What needs to change? What support is needed? When will you revisit it? Kindness includes following through rather than leaving someone to interpret a difficult conversation alone. Timing matters, of course. Pausing to gather facts or choose a private setting is responsible. Waiting indefinitely for a conversation to become comfortable is something else. If you are delaying it, be able to name what you are preparing for and when you will return to it. Your response teaches people what honesty costs Leaders also need to examine the other side of this. It is easy to say we welcome candor while making the person who offers it regret speaking. When someone challenges you, notice the urge to explain yourself before you have understood them. Ask for an example. Reflect back what you heard. You do not have to agree with every interpretation, but you do need to make it possible for someone to bring you information you would rather not hear. On It Starts With Joy LIVE, I return to two kinds of accountability: personal and cultural. Personal accountability asks what is mine to own. Cultural accountability asks what my way of operating is teaching the people around me. If I avoid every uncomfortable conversation or punish the person who starts one, I am helping create the very culture I say I want to change. Where joy belongs in the hard conversation When I talk about leading from joy, I am talking about alignment and integrity, not keeping everybody happy. A difficult conversation can be an expression of that alignment. I can value your dignity, believe in your potential, and still tell you that something needs to change. I can also care about our relationship enough to examine my own part in what is not working. This week, choose one conversation you have been postponing and give yourself a respectful avoidance audit. What needs to be said? What am I protecting by not saying it? What would it sound like if I cared about this person's growth more than my own comfort? Prepare for that conversation and make time for it. You do not need a perfect script or a guarantee that it will land easily. You need to be clear about the issue, curious about the person, and willing to stay in the conversation. Respect should make the truth possible, not keep it out of the room. For more conversations and practices on leading from joy, join me at It Starts With Joy LIVE on YouTube. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sheryl Raphael Whitaker Sheryl Raphael Whitaker, Founder & CEO Sheryl Raphael Whitaker, MBA, is a leadership transformation expert, bestselling author of It Starts with Joy: The Inner Shift That Changes Everything, and founder and CEO of EdenAnthony Elite Talent Solutions LLC. Through her JoyShift™ method and leadership philosophy, Joy is my COO™, she helps executives, teams, and organizations move from disconnection and overload to clarity, authenticity, and lasting performance. With 35+ years spanning Fortune 100 organizations, including State Farm, AIG, and USAA, her conviction is simple: lasting excellence is built on human foundations, and joy is the infrastructure most organizations are missing. Connect with Sheryl here.

Written by Melissa Coetzee, CEO & Co-Founder of Algarve Wellness Specializing in exercise science and nutrition, Melissa Coetzee leads Algarve and Africa Wellness with a dedicated one-on-one approach. Her eight years of sobriety fuel a deeply personal commitment to helping clients achieve sustainable health transformations through professional expertise and lived experience. Someone told me recently that I look amazing. I said, “Well, my face is fine. I am not.” I did not plan to say it. It came out before I could soften it, and it is the most honest sentence I have said in months. I run a business that exists to tell other people they are allowed to stop. I am one of the worst people I know at taking my own advice. I hear a version of my own sentence from almost every woman who calls me: “I have no right to feel like this.” She has an excellent life, by any outside measure, and she is not telling me she feels fine. She is telling me she is not allowed to feel otherwise. Those are two very different sentences, and the second one keeps women stuck for years. Coping well is not proof that a problem is small. In the women I work with, it is usually the reason nobody looked. The World Health Organisation defines burnout narrowly, as an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is marked by exhaustion, a growing distance from the work, and a drop in how effective you feel doing it. It is not a diagnosis on its own, and it is not a catchall word for every kind of tiredness. I want to be precise about that because the women I am describing are usually dealing with more than just their jobs. The exhaustion runs wider than any single definition can hold, and that is exactly why it gets missed. Nobody is coming to stop you For most people, something eventually goes wrong in front of other people. It is humiliating when it happens, and it is also useful because afterward they cannot pretend it did not happen. That does not happen to you. Nothing gets dropped. This week I ran an operations meeting while I was still getting dressed, with no gap between that call and the next thing on my calendar. My husband asked what was wrong when I couldn't get my hair done for the second time in one week. I had no answer for him beyond pointing at my own diary. The people near you will not raise it either. Some of them work for you. Your advisors exist to protect your name and your time, so their instinct is to smooth a thing over rather than open it up. Research on women in leadership often addresses work that lacks a clear label. It involves recognising those who are struggling, managing tension, and conveying decisions while still achieving results. However, none of this effort ever shows up on a calendar. Caregiving responsibilities extend beyond the workplace. Research consistently shows that women experience a greater burden and higher rates of depression compared to male caregivers in similar roles. A significant review by the National Academies confirms this trend. Unfortunately, no one is dedicated to recognising your efforts, so you have to be the one who notices, both at work and at home. So you make this decision alone, with nothing pushing you, while exhausted. I have only recently started planning the next day's work the night before, something I never used to do. It is a small thing. It took me this long to give myself even that much. Eat, breathe, sleep, the business There is a particular version of this for the women who built the thing they are now burning out inside. I hear myself say it, and I have heard dozens of clients say some form of the same line. If you believe there is such a thing as perfect time management while you are actually running a project, I would argue you haven't built it yet. In the beginning, flawless time management doesn't exist. This is not a complaint, it's simply a reality. As a result, the exhaustion you feel may not look like burnout to others. Instead, it comes across as commitment. McKinsey and LeanIn's Women in the Workplace research found that 42% of women reported feeling burned out often or always. That compares with 35% of men. Research on women entrepreneurs specifically has linked this kind of conflict between work and family to emotional exhaustion. At least one study has tied that exhaustion to weaker firm performance. It is not only a personal cost. It becomes a business risk, which is usually the only version of this argument some of you will actually act on. Your doctor has the same blind spot You may have already raised this once. Most women repeat the same advice back to me: walk more, improve your diet, get more sleep. You did it. You are extremely good at doing what you are told. Nothing lifted, and you drew the conclusion anybody would draw, which is that the problem must be you. It is not you. It is how this gets diagnosed. A paper in BJPsych Bulletin this year described high-functioning depression plainly. It involves real depressive symptoms in people who keep succeeding outwardly. The distress gets missed precisely because the functioning stays intact. It was not written about women specifically. It did not need to be. Most diagnostic thresholds still require visible dysfunction, and you have spent your adult life making certain you never become dysfunctional. So you did everything right, and it removed you from the group of people anyone thinks to help. Staying quiet about it is completely normal, and it is not a personal failing. You knew exactly where to go. You decided you weren't entitled to go. The first 10 minutes are never the real answer The first ten minutes of any call are polite. It has been a busy season. A holiday will sort it out. Then something shifts. What follows is often this: the fog is more frightening than the fatigue. Words tend to escape during meetings. Some people rehearse what they plan to say in advance so that no one notices, and more than one woman has privately questioned whether this issue is more serious than just hormonal changes. The tablet stopped being optional some time ago. A doctor prescribed it, so it didn't feel like admitting anything, and now sleep doesn't happen without it. Two glasses became three. It happens at dinner, in good houses, so it still looks like hospitality. Stopping, even for a week, feels impossible because everything rests on one person, and she knows exactly who that is. I want to be clear about what that list means because women hear it and panic. It does not mean anyone is falling apart. It means several things are happening at once, and nobody has looked at them together. It has been 2 years, and you think you should be past it This is the objection I hear most, and money has nothing to do with it. Time passing without relief is not evidence that you are handling it. It is information. It tells you this isn't the kind of thing that goes away by outlasting it. The other thing I hear is that other people have real problems. It is also why women get here so late. By the time they do, the drinking has usually settled into every evening, and the sleeping tablet is no longer something they could stop taking if they decided to. Work that would have been short has become long. One team, looking at all of it, in a single sitting Care for a woman in this position does not start with her productivity, and it does not start with a label. It starts with one team looking at all of it in a single sitting, which is probably something nobody has done for you yet. That includes sleep, mood, physical health, hormones where they are relevant, alcohol, whatever is being taken to sleep or to get through the day, losses that were never properly sat with, the marriage, and what is actually being carried at home. The point is that the clinicians talk to each other. That is the benefit of one sitting instead of four separate waiting rooms. Nothing about you gets lost in the handoff between specialists who have never spoken. If your first thought just now was that you could not leave your family, say that in the first conversation. More women rule themselves out over this than over money. Find out what is actually possible before you decide it is not. The part that doesn't help me commercially We built Algarve Wellness this way because the other way kept failing the same woman. Deal with the drinking and leave whatever is sitting underneath it, and the drinking comes back, usually within a few months. I have seen that often enough to stop calling it bad luck. Sometimes an assessment concludes that coming here is not what somebody needs. That is a good outcome, even though it doesn't help me commercially. Knowing exactly what is happening is worth a great deal on its own, whether that knowledge leads to us or somewhere else. If this isn't about you Some of you are not the woman I have described. You advise her, or you employ her, or she is your patient. The question you are asking is almost certainly the wrong one. Ask how she is, and you will get the answer she gives everybody. Ask about her sleep instead, and ask how long it has been like this. Then listen for whether she answers in months or in years, because with this group it is nearly always years. You will not get the truth the first time. Ask again in a month. That is the whole intervention, and hardly anybody does it. Not so you can cope better You already cope better than anyone you know. What women tell me at the end is very ordinary. They sleep without taking anything. They sit with their children in the evening instead of running the evening. They stop rehearsing before meetings. Most of them say, at some point, that they just wanted to feel like themselves again. Nobody is going to ask you the real question. It is not whether you are coping. It is what the coping is costing you. If nothing changes, nothing changes. The meetings keep getting run from odd places. The appointment you keep cancelling stays cancelled. None of it fixes itself because you are too competent to let it show, and nobody is going to interrupt you to ask. So you will have to be the one who says it first, and the part of you that holds everything together will find that almost unbearable. Do it anyway, while you are still standing. If this sounds like you, or like someone you love, speak to me directly. The first conversation is private. It is with me, not a form or an admissions inbox, and there is no charge. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Melissa Coetzee Melissa Coetzee, CEO & Co-Founder of Algarve Wellness Focusing on the intersection of longevity approaches and science-based wellness protocols, I provide a transformative experience for one individual at a time. My professional foundation in exercise science and nutrition is complemented by a deep personal understanding of resilience, having maintained eight years of sobriety. Supported by a multidisciplinary team of experts, I design bespoke programs that prioritize long-term vitality and sustainable health. My work is dedicated to those who require exclusive, high-touch care that addresses the whole person. Click through to my profile to see how our collective knowledge is distilled into personalized protocols for our clients.

Written by Michael Klein, Owner & Director at Michael Klein Arts, LLC Michael Klein is best known for his work and achievements in the field of contemporary art. As both a dealer and curator, he has had a long and distinguished career as a New York gallery owner and director, representing an international roster of emerging and mid-career artists. He became the first in-house curator for Microsoft Corporation. Lothar Osterburg’s vision is somewhat like a dream because he embellishes landmarks he recalls with fictional elements. His working process is an intricate system of first constructing sets in three dimensions, then photographing these built scenarios, and then transforming the photograph into a highly refined photogravure print. Other artists like James Casebere and Laurie Simmons are known for creating sets and then photographing them, but Osterburg takes the photo to another level of refinement. His images, always black and white, are subtle compositions, each with a myriad of gray tones, creating the atmosphere of looking not at a place but at a memory. He is fascinated with cities, both how they were built in the past and how they appear in the present. He is also fascinated with all forms of transportation, such as ships, cars, trains, and even zeppelins. He explores architecture, from modern skylines to the Tower of Babel and the works of Piranesi. The past, as Osterburg explains, is a way to understand the present: to see who we are and what we have created. He arrived from his native Braunschweig, Germany, in 1987. San Francisco was his first home in the United States, where he lived in a combined studio and apartment. Trained as a lithographer, he took his first job as a printmaker at Crown Point Press, founded and managed by the late Kathan Brown. There, Osterburg worked on the photogravure process with such artists as Christian Boltanski and John Baldessari. About his early days, he explained in an interview a few years back, “Luckily, I was laid off in the big art recession in 1993. It opened up opportunities because I moved to New York and opened my own studio.” In another interview, he said, “This country has been really open to me, instead of just giving to their own. You have to fight for it, and the competition is high, but I think the great strength of the United States is historically the diversity and the constant influx of people from all around the world coming in and adding new twists and new ideas and new energy.” This sense of new twists and new energy has led Osterburg to invent on a full scale. He builds intricate sculpture installations and transforms those structures into handsome photogravure prints in multiple editions. Once based in Brooklyn and now living in upstate New York, he created a signature work with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge, as if he could see it from his studio window. His other works are also a synthesis of imagery that is both fact and fiction: a cityscape of brownstones and tall buildings where taxi cabs line up, subway trains travel by, and zeppelins float overhead. It is an amalgam of things found in New York and things imagined to be part of the city, too. Even without a single human figure, these extraordinary tableaux have the power and drama of grand opera. In 2017, he created a large installation, Reaching for the Sky, focused on the legend of the Tower of Babel at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York. Here, he explored the biblical narrative that explains the origin of different languages and the scattering of humanity across the earth. “From my perspective,” Osterburg has explained, “this was not a punishment, but a gift of God, a gift of diversity. By placing the tower into a fictional New York City, I celebrate the immigrants from all over the world that have made New York City into one of the most vibrant cities, a place where all the languages of the world are spoken, where all the scattered people come back together and create amazing things because of their differences.” His recent exhibition in his native Germany, “Cabinet of Wonders. Lothar Osterburg back from Brooklyn,” at the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum (HAUM), presented a kind of survey of his visual ideas and thought process through a series of photogravures along with an extraordinary sculpture. The sculpture, part of “Mein Traum vom HAUM (My Dream of HAUM),” is a replica of the museum itself, a memory in three dimensions, if you will, of his visits as a child. It is constructed of papier-mâché and took over three years to assemble. The building is embellished with other images that are built into the base of the sculpture, each a memory reconstructed in three dimensions. Some are imagined, and others are based on fact. For example, there is a fictional subway stop called Museum, but New York City’s Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) system doesn’t travel to Germany! Another imagined view is the museum’s storage room filled with canvases. At one point, the museum’s wall has been broken through to reveal easels and stools in a large studio where students copy masters as they learn and practice their painting skills. The work is totally autobiographical, it is a memorial in three dimensions to his youth and his exposure to art as a young adult. As with Osterburg’s work in general, memory plays a crucial role in the final image. He takes what he knows and what he has studied and embellishes it with a fertile imagination, fabricating an image that the viewer can recognize while taking delight in the created fiction. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Michael Klein Michael Klein, Owner & Director at Michael Klein Arts, LLC Michael Klein's expertise lies in his role as a private art dealer and freelance, independent curator for individuals, institutions, and arts organizations. Today, Michael Klein Arts works with a diverse group of artists, estates, galleries, and non-profit institutions, providing management, curatorial, and other consulting services. At the same time, the company serves institutional as well as private collectors, focusing on developing collections of emerging, mid-career, and established artists. The company also organizes traveling exhibitions both in the United States and abroad.

Written by Zachary Christy, CEO and Founder of Z-Man Fitness Zack Christy has over 20 years of experience in fitness and personal training. His boxing experience was used to train thousands in the military before he turned professional. He is now the founder and CEO of Z-Man Fitness, personally training clients through customized plans, intensive one-on-one workouts, and expert advice on online platforms. Is getting fit really that hard? The time constraints. The hunger. The strenuous exercises. Sweat. Pain. Soreness. The need for motivation! Yes. It is. Unless you change your perspective. There is a military tradition in my family dating back to World War II, and after 9/11, I knew I wanted to join. I didn’t know where to start until I saw a commercial for “Special Operations”. There was a problem. My whole life, I had struggled with my weight, my family not being able to afford the martial arts I longed to practice, while my nutritional ignorance taught me a hard lesson. Then I found the boxing gym as a teen. During my recruitment, I fought in the amateurs, suffered injuries, surgery, and losses due to dramatic weight loss, atrophy, ketosis, and dehydration. I had the motivation without the knowledge. You had to take what is called a Physical Agility and Stamina Test (PAST) and lift 115 lbs over your head. Passing wasn’t the hard part. It was what was to come. The owner of our gym, Tiny Ricci, our boxing mentor, passed away. On his deathbed, he told me I should become a pro boxer, but I knew I had to join the military first. I was so excited, Googling training methods so I could look cool to instructors, but I had strangely been routed into an obscure career field, and I couldn’t understand why, especially since these people didn’t even know what it took to throw a hook. Ironically, I ended up physically training military personnel, ensuring physical fitness standards were met and exceeded. Not dozens, but thousands upon thousands of joint and coalition forces. I even taught them to box. The person who initially taught me the most about personal training in the military was a former bodybuilder and military professional whose philosophy was simple. You can work out anywhere. Anytime. “You can work out in a 4x4 room,” as he put it. But this career field had one thing I didn’t anticipate, igniting the fitness fire that would never be extinguished: mortuary affairs. While deployed, I was assigned to a detail with the Army, manning the mortuary for days on end. A casualty came in, and we had to unload the transfer case from a huge cargo aircraft. We brought it into the mortuary and opened it. What I faced changed the way I think about fitness forever. It wasn’t fear. It was perspective. I was 24. He was younger than me. Cold. Stiff. Part of his head was missing from a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). I wasn’t as sad as I was angry. Not just about this dead soldier I was helpless to save and the terrorists I wanted to kill. I was angry at myself. I had allowed someone to divert me from the mission. This led me to missions in Special Operations, several near-death experiences, and a perspective of war no one could have prepared me to understand. Special Operations Forces (SOF) and other military members understand something. Your fitness level is not optional, and in the military, it really isn’t. It’s a lawful order. It isn’t mere recreation or competition. It is a battle between life and death, and that battle may be someone else’s. When the moment arrives, and you have to choose between fight or flight, fitness or failure, God forbid it passes you by! If it does, you’ll come to understand one thing forever. It isn’t someone else’s responsibility. It’s your responsibility. Look in the mirror. Take a deep breath. Feel your pulse. Do you think you get another chance at this? The reason you think your fitness level is optional is that you do not have that perspective. You’ve never had to look necessity in the face and fight it off with only your own abilities to save you. Think about this. What if your girlfriend, family, or the person you loved most in this world was captured and trafficked? Subjugated. Spent every day in pain, being tormented by demented terrorists? What would you be willing to do to save them? I can tell you. You’d run for miles without the slightest thought of giving up. You’d climb a mountain. You’d fight harder than you ever had. You’d move faster, train with more intensity than others thought necessary, for longer than you knew you could. You’d make time all over the place and find time all over the clock. You’d persevere. Endure. Persist. You’d kill to accomplish the mission. You’d die before you quit. I know how you would feel because that’s the way I feel every day. On several of the highest priority SOF missions, I came to understand the driving force behind this mission, scenes that would bring communities to tears. Intelligence that would make your skin crawl, and qualifications that have an attrition rate of over 90%, only in order to do the most dangerous things. I thought their mottos would be some self-exalting, egotistical slogans, like “kick ass and take names” or “take names and kick their asses,” but they weren’t. They were of selflessness. “That Others May Live” Or, “De Oppresso Liber” (To Free the Oppressed) These men didn’t need someone to motivate them. They didn’t need anyone to encourage them to train. Spotters were for sniping. Headphones for protection. They didn’t need a reason. They had a reason. Your fitness isn’t lacking because you’re lazy. You lack perspective. You get the opportunity to be healthy once. If you get the chance to hit the gym, you are not facing stair climbers and dumbbells. You are being given the one chance to live life to the full. To perform at your best. To thrive. To survive. To see the views from heights others can’t climb and the expanses of distances they can’t travel. To pull yourself up when no one else will. To push the limits of what you are capable of. Lift up the broken. To fight evil. To defend the weak and save the lost. It’s not a workout, or an exercise class, or boring, endless monotony and repetition. It is the only day you’ll ever get. It’s the battle for survival. It’s the fight of your life. Follow me on Instagram and visit my website for more info! Read more from Zachary Christy Zachary Christy, CEO and Founder of Z-Man Fitness Zack Christy is a leader in fitness know-how. Constant bullying as a teen led him to learn how to defend himself, and he has had several deployments abroad with Special Operations Forces, as well as clients who can attest to his personal desire for them to understand what they are capable of. As founder and CEO of Z-Man Fitness, his understanding is now available everywhere. His expert insights have already helped thousands of fitness enthusiasts, and now Z-Man Fitness continues the fight for fitness success.

Written by Heidi Richards Mooney, Author, Coach & Entrepreneur Heidi Richards Mooney is a dynamic professional speaker, celebrated author, seasoned entrepreneur, and Senior Executive Contributor dedicated to empowering individuals and businesses to succeed. As a past president of the Florida Speakers Association, she has inspired countless audiences with her expertise in PR, internet marketing, and brand elevation. We spend much of our lives learning how to hold on. We hold on to our dreams, our ambitions, our businesses, our relationships, and the beliefs that helped us become who we are. We celebrate perseverance, reward determination, and admire those who refuse to quit. Rightly so. Persistence is often the difference between success and failure. But somewhere along the way, I believe every leader must learn an equally important lesson: Knowing when to let go can require just as much courage as knowing when to hold on. After more than four decades as an entrepreneur, business owner, publisher, and organizational leader, I've come to appreciate that leadership isn't simply about what we build or how fiercely we protect it. It's also about recognizing when something has served its purpose, when circumstances have changed, and when holding on may be preventing us from moving forward. Interestingly, this isn't a new leadership challenge. Philosophers and thinkers have wrestled with the tension between control, change, and acceptance for thousands of years. Their wisdom remains surprisingly relevant to the decisions we make in today's boardrooms, businesses, and communities. The wisdom of water: Strength doesn't always mean resistance Ancient Taoist philosophy offers a wonderful metaphor for leadership: water. In the Tao Te Ching, traditionally attributed to Lao Tzu, water is celebrated for its ability to adapt, nourish, and flow without insisting on its own importance. Water doesn't demand that every obstacle move out of its way. It finds another path. Yet, over time, water can reshape even the hardest stone. I think there's an important leadership lesson in that image. We're often taught that strong leaders stand firm, maintain control, and refuse to bend. But sometimes our greatest strength comes from knowing when to be flexible. A leader who insists that everything must happen exactly as planned may miss an unexpected opportunity. An entrepreneur who refuses to reconsider an established business model may discover that the marketplace has moved on without them. Flexibility isn't weakness. It's the ability to remain committed to a purpose without becoming imprisoned by a particular method. Sometimes the wisest way forward isn't to push harder. It's to find another path. When experience becomes an anchor When I founded Eden Florist in 1981, the business world looked very different. There was no internet, no social media, and no online ordering as we know it today. Customer relationships were built through telephone calls, personal interactions, handwritten notes, and the reputation we earned one arrangement at a time. Some of those principles remain timeless. Others have required us to adapt. Running a business for 45 years has taught me that experience is an extraordinary asset, but it can also become an anchor if we allow yesterday's successes to dictate tomorrow's decisions. The phrase "We've always done it this way" can be one of the most expensive sentences in business. It can keep us attached to outdated systems, unproductive routines, and assumptions that no longer reflect the needs of our customers or employees. The Buddhist principle of anicca, or impermanence, offers another perspective. It reminds us that the conditions of life are continually changing. Nothing remains exactly as it was. Businesses evolve. Markets shift. People grow. Customer expectations change. We can resist those changes, or we can learn to work with them. For me, the challenge has been learning to distinguish between the values worth preserving and the methods we're better off leaving behind. We don't have to abandon the principles that built our businesses to embrace new ways of operating them. Sometimes we honor what we've built by allowing it to evolve. Letting go of the illusion of control Nearly two thousand years ago, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus taught that some things are within our control and others are not. It's a distinction that belongs in every modern boardroom. We can control our preparation, our decisions, our actions, and how we respond to adversity. But we cannot control every market fluctuation, every customer's opinion, every employee's decision, or every unexpected challenge. Yet, as entrepreneurs and leaders, we often try. Small business owners are particularly susceptible to this temptation. In the beginning, we frequently are the business. We answer the telephone, serve customers, manage finances, solve problems, market our services, and make countless decisions every day. Being indispensable can feel rewarding. But over time, it can also become exhausting. A leader who insists on controlling every detail may unintentionally limit the growth of both the business and the people within it. Delegation requires more than assigning tasks. It requires communicating expectations, providing resources, allowing others to develop their own approaches, and accepting that different doesn't necessarily mean wrong. This is equally true for corporate executives. A CEO who refuses to empower capable managers creates bottlenecks. A small business owner who won't relinquish routine responsibilities leaves little time for strategic thinking. The scale may be different, but the lesson is the same. "Leadership isn't about making ourselves indispensable. It's about building something capable of thriving beyond our constant involvement." Perhaps Epictetus would remind us that our responsibility is to lead with intention, not to guarantee every outcome. The courage to leave an old identity behind Sometimes what we need to release isn't a business practice or a responsibility. It's an identity. Perhaps we've always been the person everyone turns to for answers. The founder who knows every detail. The president who leads every initiative. The professional whose reputation is tied to a particular title. When those roles change, we may wonder who we are without them. I've had the privilege of serving in leadership positions with chambers of commerce, professional associations, and women's organizations. Each experience brought valuable relationships, lessons, and opportunities. But leadership roles are chapters, not necessarily permanent identities. Eventually, someone else takes the chair, assumes the responsibilities, and brings a new perspective. That's as it should be. One of the gifts of experience is realizing that stepping away from a position doesn't diminish what we contributed while we held it. Our influence can continue through mentorship, collaboration, and the opportunities we create for others. In fact, sometimes the most meaningful thing a leader can do is make room for someone else's leadership to emerge. The title may change. The contribution doesn't have to end. When even successful leaders must release This challenge isn't limited to small businesses. Consider Arianna Huffington, who helped build The Huffington Post into a major digital media company. After experiencing the personal consequences of exhaustion, she eventually redirected her professional focus toward well-being and founded Thrive Global. Her story raises an important question, "What happens when the definition of success we've pursued no longer reflects the life we want to live?" Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, offers another perspective. After building her company into a globally recognized brand, she sold a majority stake to Blackstone in 2021, allowing the business to enter a new chapter. Different leaders. Different circumstances. Yet both examples remind us that growth sometimes involves changing our relationship with something we've worked hard to create. Letting go doesn't have to mean walking away from our accomplishments. It can mean allowing them to take on a different form. When the biggest opportunity isn't the right opportunity Years ago, I was invited to submit a floral proposal to supply flowers for a cruise line. I was over the moon. Imagine what an account like that could mean for a small business owner. The prestige. The visibility. The possibility of having a major cruise line among our clients. On the surface, it seemed like the kind of opportunity entrepreneurs dream about. Until I took a closer look. What initially appeared to be an exciting business opportunity was, in reality, a commitment that would have demanded nearly all my professional attention. At the time, I was already running Eden Florist full-time and beginning to build my marketing company. Taking on the cruise line account would have required expanding in a direction that could consume my time, energy, and resources. I began asking myself a question that has guided many of my business decisions since, "Just because I can pursue an opportunity, does that mean I should?" The more I considered the commitment, the clearer the answer became. I said no. Not because I was afraid of growing. Not because the opportunity wasn't impressive. Certainly not because I lacked ambition. I said no because I recognized that this particular kind of growth would take me further away from the future I wanted to create. Looking back, it was one of the best business decisions I ever made. Not long afterward, other opportunities began presenting themselves. Opportunities I would have had to decline if I'd committed my time and resources to that cruise line account. Those subsequent opportunities helped shape the direction of my career and opened doors I couldn't have anticipated at the time. I've often thought about how differently things might have unfolded had I said yes to the opportunity that initially seemed too good to pass up. There's a tendency in business to equate bigger with better. Bigger accounts. Bigger contracts. Bigger teams. Bigger revenues. But bigger can also mean less flexibility, more pressure, thinner margins, and less freedom to pursue the work that matters most. Sometimes the prestige of an opportunity can distract us from its true cost. I've learned that growth isn't simply about expansion. It's about alignment. Does the opportunity support your vision? Does it strengthen your business? Does it create the kind of future you actually want? Or does it merely look impressive from the outside? "Exposure means little if it pulls you away from the very thing that made you valuable in the first place." That cruise line opportunity taught me something I've carried throughout my entrepreneurial journey: Sometimes the most important business decision isn't the opportunity we accept. It's the one we have the wisdom to decline. The hidden cost of holding on We often focus on what we might lose if we let something go. What if the new strategy fails? What if someone else doesn't perform the task as well? What if we regret stepping away? What if an opportunity never comes again? These are reasonable concerns. But there's another question leaders should ask more often, "What is the cost of continuing to hold on?" Consider the entrepreneur who keeps offering an unprofitable service because it was once the foundation of the business. Or the executive who maintains an ineffective process because changing it might create temporary discomfort. Or the leader who continues accepting every invitation, serving on every committee, and saying yes to every request, even when those commitments leave little room for the work that matters most. The cost isn't always visible on a balance sheet. Sometimes it appears as lost creativity, missed opportunities, strained relationships, exhausted employees, or a growing sense that we're working harder without moving forward. I've learned that every commitment occupies space in our lives. Sometimes, before we can say yes to something meaningful, we must find the courage to say no to something familiar. Letting go isn't the same as giving up This is an important distinction. I would never suggest that leaders abandon a worthwhile goal simply because the journey becomes difficult. Some of my most meaningful accomplishments have required persistence through uncertainty, setbacks, and unexpected detours. There are times when we need to work harder, seek advice, change our approach, or give an idea more time. But there are also times when determination becomes stubbornness. How do we know the difference? I believe we begin by asking ourselves a few questions: Am I holding on because this still serves a meaningful purpose, or because I've already invested so much in it? Would I make the same commitment today, knowing what I know now? Is my involvement helping others grow, or preventing them from taking ownership? What opportunities might become possible if I released this responsibility, expectation, or belief? Am I making this decision from conviction, or from fear of change? These questions don't always produce easy answers. But they can help us recognize whether we're demonstrating perseverance or simply resisting an inevitable transition. Letting go isn't about caring less. It's about becoming more intentional about what deserves our care. The ancient art of knowing when The ancient Greeks had a concept called kairos, referring to the opportune or fitting moment. Unlike chronos, which concerns the passage of time, kairos emphasizes the significance of timing. I find that distinction especially meaningful in leadership. There is a time to persevere and a time to reconsider. A time to build and a time to step aside. A time to hold firmly to our convictions and a time to acknowledge that circumstances have changed. A decision made too early may sacrifice a promising opportunity. A decision delayed too long may prevent growth. The challenge is developing enough judgment and self-awareness to recognize which moment we're standing in. I don't believe that wisdom comes from age alone. It comes from experience, reflection, humility, and a willingness to acknowledge that what served us yesterday may not be what we need tomorrow. Perhaps most importantly, it comes from understanding that we can care deeply about something without insisting that it remain exactly as it has always been. Making room for what comes next One of the unexpected pleasures of my entrepreneurial journey has been discovering that I don't have to remain the same person I was when I started. The young woman who opened a flower shop in 1981 couldn't have imagined every opportunity that would eventually follow: publishing magazines, leading professional organizations, writing books, mentoring entrepreneurs, and creating collaborative communities for authors. Each chapter has contributed something valuable to the next. Each has required me, in one way or another, to reconsider how I spend my time, where I direct my energy, and what deserves my attention. I don't believe we ever stop growing as leaders. But growth often requires us to release an assumption, a habit, an expectation, or an outdated definition of success. Sometimes we must stop being the person who does everything so we can become the person who empowers others. Sometimes we must leave behind a familiar role to discover a more meaningful contribution. Sometimes we must accept that a chapter can be successful even when it's time for that chapter to end. The leadership wisdom of knowing when Perhaps the real art of letting go lies in understanding that not everything is meant to be carried forever. Some responsibilities are ours for a season. Some opportunities teach us what we need to learn. Some relationships change. Some business models become outdated. Some dreams evolve into something we couldn't have imagined when we first pursued them. The challenge isn't to release everything that becomes difficult. It's to develop the judgment to recognize what deserves our continued commitment and what may be holding us back. I think again of the ancient wisdom of water. Water doesn't stop moving because the landscape changes. It adapts, finds another way, and continues its journey. Perhaps leadership asks something similar of us. To remain committed to our purpose without becoming attached to only one path. To appreciate what we've built without insisting that it remain unchanged. To recognize that an open hand can sometimes accomplish more than a tightly closed fist. Because leadership isn't only measured by what we build, achieve, or hold together. "Sometimes our greatest growth begins with what we have the courage to release." Perhaps that's one of the most important lessons experience teaches us: knowing when to hold on is a strength, but knowing when to let go is an art. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Heidi Richards Mooney Heidi Richards Mooney, Author, Coach & Entrepreneur Heidi Richards Mooney is a dynamic professional speaker, celebrated author, seasoned entrepreneur, and Senior Executive Contributor dedicated to empowering individuals and businesses to succeed. As a past president of the Florida Speakers Association, she has inspired countless audiences with her expertise in PR, internet marketing, and brand elevation. A small business owner and PR strategist, Heidi specializes in helping clients amplify their online presence, craft compelling narratives, and achieve measurable results. She empowers clients to get their websites and online profiles noticed by leveraging innovative Public Relations campaigns, capitalizing on achievements to secure media attention, and building a consistent, influential brand voice.

Written by Alessandra Taylor, Yoga & Wellbeing Instructor With a calming presence and an infectious energy, Alex inspires people to slow down and reconnect with themselves. By linking movement with conscious breathing, she helps regulate the nervous system, reduce cortisol levels, and restore balance between mind and body. Yoga is still sometimes viewed as something men turn to only when they are injured or inflexible. In reality, it can support strength, mobility, focus and emotional resilience. Encouragingly, that stigma is beginning to fade, with more men taking up yoga to support their mental, physical and emotional wellbeing. The mental connection and emotional release With mental health concerns receiving greater attention, particularly among men, yoga can provide a valuable space to connect with the body and mind and become fully immersed in the practice. Stepping away from outside noise and focusing on the breath can be both powerful and restorative. We do not always realise how overworked the mind is or how staying in the present moment can give it the reset it needs. Some men learn to compartmentalise their thoughts, which can help them focus and avoid distraction. However, this should not become a way of ignoring or suppressing feelings. In today’s digital world, our minds are constantly occupied by calls, WhatsApp messages and social media. We have forgotten how to decompress. Yoga can offer a mental pause and transport you to a quieter place, even if only for the duration of a class. We are human, not robots, and mental rest matters just as much as physical rest. Emotional release matters too. Some men learn to suppress their feelings because of how they were raised or as a way of coping with difficult experiences. Yet constantly pushing emotions aside can create tension and make it harder to understand what is happening beneath the surface. Yoga offers a quiet space to notice feelings without judgement, allowing them to arise and pass naturally. As the body begins to soften through movement and breath, you may become more aware of where you have been holding stress. Being open to that experience is not a weakness; it can build emotional awareness, strengthen relationships and show others, including children, that expressing feelings is a healthy part of being human. Yoga creates a space where the ego can stay at the door and you can simply be present. Physical benefits Some men think that if they are not doing vigorous exercise, they are not exercising at all. However, this is a myth. Intense exercise can provide a welcome release after a stressful day, but a balanced routine that includes gentler movement can support both mental and physical wellbeing. Styles such as Hatha yoga can slow things down, lengthen the muscles and improve mobility. Regular practice can also support better balance and posture, aid recovery after exercise and encourage the relaxation that can lead to more restful sleep. This can be particularly helpful before and after sports such as golf, where stiffness in the hips can affect movement. A golf swing takes the body through a wide range of motion, involving the shoulders, hips, lower back and ankles. Maintaining mobility in these areas can support your range of movement, comfort and focus during play. Sitting for long periods can also contribute to stiffness and discomfort, particularly around the hips, if regular movement is neglected. This is something I often discuss with the men who come to me for yoga. Once they become familiar with the flow of the practice and realise that yoga is not just for women, they begin to notice its benefits. Ready to give yoga a try? Yoga can help calm the nervous system and create a greater sense of inner peace. We are often encouraged to try something new, so I invite every man reading this article who has not yet tried yoga to attend a class in person. Starting in person means an instructor can guide your movements, help you use the correct technique and reduce the risk of injury. Once you feel confident and have established a consistent practice, online classes can offer the flexibility to move at your own pace and in your own time. Move now while you can and give yourself the opportunity to enjoy the sports and activities you love with greater freedom. By opening the body, quietening the mind and making space for your emotions, yoga can support a healthier, more balanced life. Follow me on Instagram for more info! Read more from Alessandra Taylor Alessandra Taylor, Yoga & Wellbeing Instructor Alex is a leader in movement and using yoga to heal. The loss of a close friend at the age of 19 brought her to yoga and its spiritual healing power. Since then, she has helped many people globally, both men and women, regain confidence and find inner peace and calm. She has been an expert for the IVF Network and has supported couples on their parenthood journey. She considers herself to be an eternal student and is always learning and growing.

Written by Terri Lee Ryan, Podcast Host Terri Lee Ryan has built a writing, media production, and speaker platform. As a lifestyle author, TV producer, career coach, and advocate, she brings underrepresented stories to a mainstream audience. There are many instances in our lives when something has happened that we cannot explain. It may be a moment in time when we made a choice and found out later that, if we had done something differently, the result could have been dire. It could be a plane we accidentally missed, which had engine trouble, or a time when we waited in traffic on our way to a meeting and later found out that, if we had reached an intersection a few minutes earlier, we might have been in an accident we witnessed as we drove by. These incidents aren’t planned. There is no logic or calculation behind our choices, yet we are spared from what could be a disastrous event. It’s not instinct. Is it happenstance or fate, or some other force that saved us? I have often pondered this topic because there have been many incidents in my life when I know I was saved. One time, I had planted flowers in my front yard in the morning and then later that afternoon rushed out to an appointment. Running out toward the street, something told me to stop and look at the tulips I had planted. I stopped and looked back at my tulips, and I saw a car right beside me. The driver looked like she was in shock because she hadn’t seen me and would have hit me if I hadn’t stopped to admire my flowers. I believe it was my angels looking out for me. What started out as taking a photo of the full moon this summer with my new high-resolution iPhone 17 became the basis for my new podcast, Aliens, Angels and Ancestors, which recently launched here. The first night I took a picture of the brightly lit summer moon with my new phone, I noticed two green orbs flying in the distance. Initially, I thought maybe they were lights from a streetlight, yet they kept racing past the palm trees by my home in Palm Springs, CA, in various patterns. I wondered what these objects were, as something didn’t seem right. The next night, I went out to take another photo of the moon, and I saw one of the orbs closer to my home, nestled in a palm tree only a few hundred feet away. I snapped a photo and enlarged it, and what I saw was remarkable. Within that green orb were two Neanderthal men! I have shown the photo to many since then, and they all see the prehistoric images in the orb. Again, this was an accidental sighting. It was unplanned. I truly just wanted a clear photo of the summer moon because my older-model phone didn’t take great photos. I just wanted to get a clear photo of the moon against the dark purple-blue sky, and what I received was a visit from a green orb with two Neanderthal faces in it! This was the impetus for my podcast topic. I have always believed in angels and aliens, undefined energy, but now I had been presented with an unexplained orb with a Neanderthal! I saw this as a sign to move forward and develop a platform to talk about our own experiences of being saved by our angels. I know I was rescued when I almost drowned at the Bitter End in the Caribbean islands. This is where the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea meet. I was swept by the current, and when I surrendered, I was sent up to the surface. I finally came to terms with the memory of a visitation from an alien when I was seven years old. I didn’t see the aliens, only the ship, and received a message from them. This is something I could never talk about, even with my parents or anyone else, so I held onto it until now. Yet what they told me has become the truth, and I now know what they said to me is real. Now I have ancestors, the Neanderthals, showing up. I saw this as a sign to do this podcast. We record in Palm Springs, CA, in the Melrose Studios. I am looking for stories from you as we all explore these topics. My pilot launched, and it is a weekly podcast. Listen, like, subscribe, and be open to the messages. We truly are never alone in our lives. We have guides, angels, and ancestors who are by our side. Once we know this, life begins to make more sense, and the fear of being alone is removed. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Terri Lee Ryan Terri Lee Ryan, Podcast Host As a lifestyle author, TV producer, career coach, and advocate, Terri has brought underrepresented stories to a mainstream audience. From her documentary, "I Married a Crossdresser", airing on Sky UK, to being a finalist for two of her projects at the New York TV Film Festival, she has championed women over 40 and the transgender community with humor, honesty, and heart. A popular writer, she has been a featured columnist and blogger for Chicago Tribune -ChicagoNow, Today's Chicago Woman magazine, The Huffington Post, Sister House, and Frock sites. She is the author of Life is One Big To-Do List: A Woman's Life After 40 and a thought leader on the transgender community with her podcast Shades of Gender.