Written by Dr. Franco Cavaleri, Biomedical Researcher and Nutraceutical Innovator Franco Cavaleri, a biomedical researcher and true biohacker, transformed his life and career through self-experimentation, culminating in winning the IFBB Mr. North America title. His journey fueled his rise as a scientist, thought leader, author and entrepreneur in creating potent nutraceuticals to optimize the full potential of body and mind. Walk into any health food store, browse social media, or spend a few minutes on TikTok, and you'll quickly notice that we're living through an unprecedented era of interest in health and longevity. Consumers are more informed than ever. They are asking better questions. They are no longer looking for the next miracle pill. They're looking for solutions that support cognitive performance, healthy aging, metabolic health, gut function, resilience to stress, and overall vitality. Recent industry reports highlight growing interest in ingredients such as curcumin, ashwagandha, collagen, probiotics, nootropics, glutathione, and blood sugar support. While these ingredients may seem like the latest wellness trends, many represent biological pathways that researchers have been investigating for decades. The encouraging news is that consumers are beginning to appreciate something scientists have long understood, health is rarely about one ingredient. It is about understanding biology. The challenge is that while public awareness has advanced dramatically, much of the supplement industry has not. We've been asking the wrong question For decades, the nutraceutical industry has largely asked, "Which ingredient is trending?" It is a marketing question. Science asks a different one, "Which molecules are responsible for a biological effect, how do they work, and how can we consistently reproduce that effect?" Those two questions lead to very different products. Throughout my career as a researcher in experimental medicine and nutritional biochemistry, I have been fascinated by one central idea. Nature already contains remarkable therapeutic compounds. Our responsibility is to understand them properly. Not simply identify them. Not simply extract them. But understand how they interact with human biology at the molecular level. That philosophy has guided decades of research into curcuminoids, withanolides, metabolic compounds, and other naturally occurring bioactive molecules that influence inflammation, oxidative stress, cellular signaling, metabolism, and healthy aging. Rather than approaching natural compounds as traditional herbal extracts, I believe they deserve the same scientific rigor that pharmaceutical research applies to drug discovery. Where pharmacology meets nature One of the greatest misconceptions about supplements is that two products containing the same botanical are essentially the same. They are not. A turmeric capsule is not simply "curcumin," and an ashwagandha extract is not simply "ashwagandha." Plants contain hundreds of naturally occurring compounds. Even when manufacturers standardize extracts to a single marker compound, two products can have very different biological activity because their overall molecular composition differs. This variability has challenged the credibility of natural health products for decades. What if we approached natural compounds differently? What if we applied the principles of pharmacology to botanicals? In pharmaceutical development, researchers do not simply identify a promising molecule and hope for the best. They investigate mechanisms of action, biological targets, stability, consistency, pharmacokinetics, and reproducibility. I believe nutraceuticals deserve the same level of scientific discipline. My research has focused on identifying the active molecular constituents responsible for biological effects, investigating how they influence cellular pathways, and engineering extraction technologies that produce consistent, reproducible compositions. This approach is less about maximizing the quantity of a botanical and more about optimizing its biological function. In many ways, it represents a meeting point between modern pharmacology and natural medicine. Precision matters Natural compounds are extraordinarily complex. Curcumin, for example, is often discussed as though it were a single molecule. In reality, turmeric contains several closely related curcuminoids, each with distinct biological characteristics. Similarly, ashwagandha contains multiple withanolides that differ in their pharmacological activity. The relative proportions of these compounds matter. Understanding those relationships opens the door to a more sophisticated approach to nutraceutical development. Rather than asking how much of a plant is present, we can ask: Which bioactive molecules are present? How do they influence biological pathways? How can we create consistent compositions that produce reproducible biological activity? How can we improve stability and quality without compromising the complexity of nature? These questions formed the foundation of much of my published research and patented nutraceutical technologies. They also reflect a broader evolution occurring across nutritional science. The future is precision nutrition Perhaps the most exciting development in health today is not a supplement. It is personalization. Every individual possesses a unique biological fingerprint. Two people eating the same foods, following the same exercise program, and taking the same supplements may experience very different outcomes because their biology differs. This is where genetics, the microbiome, and environmental exposures become increasingly important. Personalized health is moving us beyond generalized recommendations toward strategies informed by an individual's biology. Understanding one's deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) can provide insights into inherited tendencies related to nutrient metabolism and other physiological processes that remain stable throughout life. The microbiome, by contrast, is dynamic. It changes with diet, medications, stress, illness, and lifestyle, making periodic assessment valuable. Environmental factors such as heavy metal exposure can also evolve over time and may influence overall health depending on the individual and the context. Rather than navigating wellness through trial and error, we now have opportunities to make more informed decisions. The future of health is unlikely to be one-size-fits-all. It will be increasingly personalized. The trends are finally catching up Many of today's fastest-growing supplement categories reflect areas that researchers have been investigating for years. Interest in gut health continues to expand as we learn more about the microbiome's influence on immunity, metabolism, and even cognitive function. Brain health and cognitive performance have become major priorities as people seek sustained mental clarity rather than temporary stimulation. Blood sugar regulation has entered mainstream conversation as awareness grows around metabolic health. Stress resilience and sleep support have become essential components of preventative wellness. Inflammation and healthy aging remain central themes across longevity research. These are not isolated trends. They are interconnected systems. Human biology functions as an integrated network rather than independent organs and isolated pathways. That systems perspective has guided much of my research. Science before marketing One of the most encouraging changes I see today is that consumers are becoming more discerning. They increasingly ask, "Where was this researched? How was it standardized? What evidence supports it? Has it been published?" Those are exactly the right questions. The future of the nutraceutical industry depends not on louder marketing but on stronger science. Research must guide innovation, not the other way around. Building a better model Scientific discovery should not remain confined to research journals. Knowledge should be translated into practical tools that help people make informed decisions about their health. That philosophy has inspired several complementary initiatives. Through Potential Within, we are expanding conversations around longevity, nutrition, metabolism, brain health, and emerging research through educational articles, podcasts, and interviews with scientists, clinicians, and innovators. Our goal is to make complex science understandable and useful. Alongside education, we believe understanding biology is the logical first step toward personalized wellness. This includes access to biological assessment tools such as DNA, microbiome, and heavy metal testing, helping individuals gain deeper insight into their own physiology before making lifestyle or nutritional decisions. For those seeking science-informed nutraceutical products, Nunu Bioceuticals translates decades of research into consumer formulations built around specific health goals such as metabolic health, cognitive performance, healthy inflammatory responses, stress resilience, and sleep support. Behind these technologies is Biologic Pharmamedical, where our research extends into ingredient innovation, patented nutraceutical technologies, formulation development, and manufacturing partnerships for organizations seeking to develop evidence-informed health products for both human and companion animal health. Although these initiatives serve different audiences, they share one philosophy. Education should inform decisions. Science should guide innovation. Biology should guide personalization. A new era of nutraceuticals We are entering a remarkable period in healthcare. The conversation is shifting from treating disease toward optimizing health, from generalized advice toward personalized biology, from marketing claims toward scientific evidence, and from isolated ingredients toward integrated biological systems. Natural compounds have enormous potential. Realizing that potential requires moving beyond simplistic thinking and embracing rigorous scientific investigation. The future of nutraceuticals is not about adding more ingredients to a label. It is about understanding why those ingredients work, how they work, and for whom they work best. That future has already begun. The question is whether we are prepared to think differently. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Dr. Franco Cavaleri Dr. Franco Cavaleri, Biomedical Researcher and Nutraceutical Innovator Franco Cavaleri is a distinguished figure in the realm of biomedical research and a true pioneer in biohacking. His journey commenced when he successfully biohacked his own physique, culminating in clinching the IFBB Mr. North America title while studying Nutritional Biochemistry. This personal triumph acted as a catalyst, propelling him into a prominent role as a Biomedical Researcher, thought leader, entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker. Cavaleri's expertise is centered on leveraging potent nutraceuticals to enhance bodily functions and achieve optimal health. His insights and discoveries continue to influence the field, making significant contributions to our understanding of nutritional science and its practical applications.

Written by John Quaid, Bespoke Wellness Consultant Thirty-five years in corporate life. Seven years of inner work. One simple truth - when the inner world shifts, the outer world changes. Founder of Believe in Wellness. Most people walk into a room and think about what they are going to say. What they rarely consider is what they are already communicating before a word leaves their mouth. Your energy, the felt quality of your inner state, arrives before you do, and the people around you register it whether you intend them to or not. This article explores what that means in practice and what you can do about it before your next significant meeting, conversation, or interaction. I wish to begin with something that happened in a boardroom, not a meditation retreat. It was a high-stakes meeting. The kind where the outcome mattered, where the people in the room were sharp, and the atmosphere was already charged before anyone had opened a laptop or spoken a word. A senior leader walked in four minutes late. He said nothing beyond a brief apology, took his seat, and the meeting began. Within ten minutes, the entire energy of the room had shifted. Not because of what he said. Because of what he carried with him. The tension in his body. The distraction behind his eyes. The tightly managed composure was working just hard enough to signal that something underneath it was not composed at all. Nobody named it. Nobody needed to. Every person in that room felt it and adjusted accordingly. A decision deferred, candor quietly set aside, people editing themselves before they had spoken a single word. I have never forgotten that morning. Not because it was unusual, but because it was so ordinary. It happens in every organisation, every team, every relationship, every day. We simply do not talk about it. What arrives before the words do Your energy enters the room before you do. Not your strategy, your agenda, or your track record. Your energy. The felt quality of your inner state in that moment. The people around you register it before a single word has been spoken, often before they are consciously aware they have noticed anything at all. This is not abstract. Researchers call this emotional contagion. The science on how quickly we absorb each other's emotional states is remarkably robust, and it operates well beneath the level of conscious awareness. We read each other constantly beneath the level of language. The slight tension in someone's jaw. The quality of stillness, or its absence, in how a person occupies a chair. The difference between someone who is fully present and someone who is physically in the room but mentally three conversations ahead. These signals arrive first, and they shape everything that follows. The question worth sitting with is not whether your energy affects the room. It does, without exception. The question is what energy you are bringing, and whether you have any awareness of it before you walk through the door. Energy is not a morning routine Most of what is written about energy in a leadership context focuses on managing it. Protecting it. Optimising it. All of that has value. But it addresses the surface, not the source. Much of the conversation around energy management in leadership focuses on renewal and recovery, which are important but still external. The deeper question is what your energy is actually expressing about your inner state. In my experience, from thirty-five years in corporate life and from the inner work that ran alongside it, the energy you bring into a room is not primarily a product of how well you slept or whether you meditated that morning. It is the natural expression of your relationship with your own inner world. I know this from the inside. There was a period in my corporate career when I was carrying more than I realised, pressure that had become so normalised I no longer recognised it as unusual. I walked into rooms believing I was composed. What I was, in truth, was contained. The difference between those two things is something the people around you feel long before you do. It was only when the inner work began that I understood what I had been bringing into every room for years, and what became possible when that changed. When the inner world is carrying unprocessed stress, unresolved tension or the quiet hum of chronic overwhelm, something of that state travels with you into every room you enter. People feel it even when you believe you have successfully concealed it. Especially then, in fact, because the effort of concealment has its own quality that others sense without being able to name. When the inner world is more settled, when you have done the work of becoming more present, more self-aware, more at peace with what you are navigating, something different enters the room with you. This is what a leadership energy footprint built from the inside out looks like, a quality of steadiness, of being fully here, of meeting people rather than managing them. That quality cannot be performed convincingly for long. It is built, slowly and honestly, from the inside out. What I learned to do before walking into a room During the more pressurised stretches of my career, I developed a practice I still use today. Before any significant meeting or conversation, I would take a moment, sometimes thirty seconds, sometimes two or three minutes, to stop completely. Not to review my agenda or rehearse my opening line. Simply to stop. To feel my feet on the floor, take three slow, deliberate breaths and ask myself honestly, what am I carrying into this room right now, and is it what I want to bring? That question alone changes something. It creates a space between the automatic and the intentional. Between walking in carrying whatever the last hour deposited and walking in with awareness and genuine choice about the quality of presence you are offering. I have seen this shift change the tone of a difficult conversation before it began. Not because the challenges disappeared. Because the person who walked in was genuinely different from the one who had been sitting outside two minutes earlier. Your team, your clients, and your family feel that difference. They may never articulate what changed. They will feel it nonetheless. The invitation Before your next significant conversation or meeting, try this. Find sixty seconds beforehand. Step away from the noise, even briefly. Feel your feet on the floor. Breathe slowly, three times. Then ask yourself quietly, what am I bringing into this room right now? This kind of mindful presence at work is not reserved for meditation practitioners. It is available to anyone willing to pause. Not what you intend to say. What are you carrying? That single moment of honest self-awareness is not a technique. It is the beginning of something more important, the understanding that the most powerful thing you bring into any room is not your experience, your authority, or your preparation. It is the quality of your presence. Presence begins not at the door, but in the quiet work of knowing yourself well enough to choose what you carry. If this article resonated with you, I would love to hear how it lands in practice. Visit here to explore more on inner work, mindfulness, and the quiet practices that change everything from the inside out. My book Keep Believing – The Best Is Yet to Come, a personal guide to the inner work that changes everything, launches in September 2026. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from John Quaid John Quaid, Bespoke Wellness Consultant John Quaid, known as JQ, is the founder of Believe in Wellness and a Bespoke Wellness Consultant who guides individuals and organisations to transform from within, through mind, body and spirit. After 35 years in corporate life, including leadership roles at Dell Technologies and O2 Ireland, he left to fully align his work with his purpose. That decision was not made lightly. It was the result of seven years of inner work, lived quietly alongside a demanding corporate career, that changed not just how he worked but how he showed up for every relationship, conversation and ordinary moment within it. JQ writes for the professional who senses that the most important work of their life has nothing to do with their job title.

Written by John Quaid, Bespoke Wellness Consultant Thirty-five years in corporate life. Seven years of inner work. One simple truth - when the inner world shifts, the outer world changes. Founder of Believe in Wellness. Between every thought and every reaction, there is a moment. Most people never find it. In that gap lives something precious, the freedom to choose how you respond rather than simply execute the pattern that has always run before. This article introduces the observer, the part of you that can watch your thoughts, emotions and reactions without being swept away by them, and shows you how to begin finding that gap in the most ordinary moments of your day. There was a moment, some years into the inner work, when something shifted in a way I had not anticipated. A situation arose that, in an earlier version of my life, would have triggered an immediate and familiar reaction. Frustration. The pull to defend. The urge to respond before I had even fully registered what was happening. On this occasion, something different occurred. A stillness arrived before the reaction did. Not a forced stillness, not a technique being applied. Simply a quiet, clear moment of watching what was happening inside me before being swept into it. I saw the thought arrive. I noticed the emotion beginning to rise. I watched the old familiar pattern preparing to run. For the first time, I was not inside it. I was observing it. That experience did not make me less present or less engaged. It made me more so. Clearer. More able to choose what happened next rather than simply being carried along by what always happened before. That is the observer. What the observer is From a spiritual and life perspective, the observer, sometimes called the silent witness, is the part of you that watches your thoughts, emotions and physical sensations without being swept away by them. It is pure, non-judgmental awareness, the background space of consciousness in which experience happens. You are not your thoughts. You are the one noticing them. You are not your reactions. You are the one who can choose whether to follow them. Most people live their entire lives identified with the weather and never discover that they are the sky. The thoughts, the emotions, the reactions, these are the weather. Constantly changing, sometimes stormy, sometimes still. The observer is the sky. Constant. Spacious. Entirely unharmed by whatever passes through it. This is not a philosophy to understand intellectually. It is a capacity to develop through lived experience. The difference between knowing this and living it is built one honest moment at a time. Before going further, the most common misreading of this idea is worth naming clearly because it costs people the very thing they were reaching for. The observer is not about stepping back from life or keeping experience at a distance. It is full presence, full feeling, full engagement with whatever is happening. The difference is that you are not consumed by it. You feel the wave completely. You are simply no longer being swept away by it. Before everything changed For most of my life, I was not observing my inner world. I was being lived by it. The thought arrived, and I followed it. The emotion arose, and I became it. The reaction fired, and I was already inside it before I had registered what triggered it. I was not choosing my responses. I was executing my patterns. The distinction between those two things sounds subtle. The distance between them is the difference between a life that feels like yours and one that simply happens to you. My mind ran continuously, producing thoughts, stories and conclusions faster than I could track them. What made it particularly difficult to see was that it all felt like me. Automatic thought patterns run so fast and feel so personal that most people never question whether the thought is true, only what to do about it. None of it was me. It was simply the pattern running, unobserved and therefore unchallenged. My wife said something to me during this period that I have never forgotten. She observed quietly that what I was treating as reality was simply the mind's interpretation of it, and that the two were rarely the same thing. That single observation, offered without judgment and eventually received with some humility, was the beginning of a different relationship with my own thinking. What lives in the gap Between a thought arising and being swept into it, there is a moment. Most people miss it entirely because the pattern runs so fast that the reaction feels simultaneous with the trigger. With practice, that moment becomes visible. Then it becomes inhabitable. Research from Harvard confirms this gap exists and can be widened. Eight weeks of mindfulness practice produced measurable changes in the brain regions associated with attention, memory and self-awareness. In that gap lives something worth protecting. The freedom to choose your response rather than simply execute your reaction. I experienced this concretely during some of the more pressurised stretches of my corporate career. In rooms where the stakes were high, where criticism arrived publicly and where the ego had every reason to defend itself, the observer created a space I had not previously had access to. Not a long space. Sometimes a single breath. Enough to ask quietly, “Is this the response I want to give, or simply the one that is ready?” That question changed the quality of how I showed up in ways people noticed before I could fully explain what had shifted in me. A moment I carry with me There was a period during the inner work when my wife and I began to notice something together. Moments in ordinary life, a conversation unfolding, something unexpected arising, when we both stepped back internally before responding. She turned to me in one of those moments and asked quietly, “Is this a movie, or is it really happening?” It was one of the most precise descriptions I have encountered of the observer in action. Not disengagement. Not distance. Two people, in the middle of an ordinary moment, present enough to observe the moment rather than simply be in it. That is available to you too. Not as an achievement to reach, but as a capacity to grow, one small moment of awareness at a time. The practice This requires no equipment, no dedicated time and no prior experience. It is a single question you can carry into any moment of any day. The next time something triggers a strong thought, emotion or reaction, pause for a moment before responding and ask yourself, “Am I inside this right now, or can I observe it from slightly outside?” Simply asking the question creates the gap. Begin with the smallest moments, the mild irritation, the passing worry, the automatic judgment. These are where the observer is easiest to find and where the habit is built. A useful entry point is self-observation practice, which moves through five progressively deeper stages as awareness develops. Over time, what begins as an occasional moment of awareness becomes a more natural way of moving through your inner life. The ability to observe thoughts without judgment is at the heart of both mindfulness and a growth mindset, and it is available to anyone willing to begin. The observer does not silence the mind or eliminate difficult emotions. What it offers is more useful than silence. It offers perspective. The capacity to be fully in your life and no longer completely at the mercy of every thought that passes through it. “I am the observer, not the reaction.” Seven words that changed how I move through my own inner world and, in doing so, changed how I show up in every room, relationship and conversation that followed. The sky does not fight the weather. It simply allows it to pass. You can learn to do the same. Follow me on Instagram. LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from John Quaid John Quaid, Bespoke Wellness Consultant John Quaid, known as JQ, is the founder of Believe in Wellness and a Bespoke Wellness Consultant who guides individuals and organisations to transform from within, through mind, body and spirit. After 35 years in corporate life, including leadership roles at Dell Technologies and O2 Ireland, he left to fully align his work with his purpose. That decision was not made lightly. It was the result of seven years of inner work, lived quietly alongside a demanding corporate career, that changed not just how he worked but how he showed up for every relationship, conversation and ordinary moment within it. JQ writes for the professional who senses that the most important work of their life has nothing to do with their job title.

Written by Debra Whitson, Attorney, Mediator & Certified Divorce Specialist™ For the first half of her career, Debra Whitson was a prosecutor, and she spent the latter half specializing in Matrimonial and Family Law. She is an experienced mediator and collaborative divorce practitioner as well as a recognized expert in working with victims of domestic violence. For generations, conversations about divorce often began with a familiar financial assumption: the husband earned more, while the wife was more likely to be financially dependent. That picture no longer reflects many modern marriages. Today, women are executives, physicians, attorneys, entrepreneurs, business owners, and high-performing professionals. In many households, the wife is the primary breadwinner or earns substantially more than her spouse. Women’s Equality Day, observed on August 26, is an opportunity to recognize how far women have come in their professional and economic lives. It is also an opportunity to examine what those changing roles can mean when a marriage ends. When the wife earns more, divorce can raise financial questions that neither spouse may have expected. A higher-earning wife may pay spousal maintenance One of the most persistent misconceptions about divorce is that spousal maintenance is something a husband pays to a wife. New York law does not assign those roles based on gender. Under the state’s maintenance framework, the spouse with the higher income is generally identified as the “payor,” while the lower-income spouse is the “payee” for purposes of the guideline calculation. That means a wife who earns significantly more than her husband could potentially be required to pay temporary or post-divorce maintenance. Income is important, but it is not the only consideration. New York law provides factors courts may consider when determining maintenance, including adjustments to a guideline award, duration, and whether additional maintenance may be appropriate when the payor’s income exceeds the applicable statutory cap. For a successful woman who has spent years building a career, medical practice, company, or professional reputation, this possibility may come as a surprise. But it represents an important aspect of equality under modern family law: the financial realities of the marriage matter more than outdated assumptions about gender. Earning more does not mean you automatically “lose half” Another common fear among higher earners is that divorce means automatically handing over half of everything they have built. That is not how New York property division works. New York follows the principle of equitable distribution. When spouses divorce, marital property is divided equitably, which does not necessarily mean equally. New York courts describe marriage as both an economic and social partnership and distinguish between marital property and separate property when determining how assets should be distributed. For high-income women, identifying and valuing those assets can become complicated. The financial picture might include: Executive compensation and bonuses Restricted stock or other equity compensation Business or professional practice interests Retirement accounts Investment portfolios Real estate Deferred compensation Separate or inherited assets Complex debt and tax considerations Simply knowing whose name appears on an account or asset may not answer the question of how it will be treated in divorce. The earlier these issues are identified, the better positioned someone may be to make strategic decisions rather than reactive ones. Your income and your assets are different issues High earnings and ownership of marital property are also separate concepts. A significant salary does not necessarily mean every asset belongs primarily to the higher-earning spouse. At the same time, the financial and nonfinancial contributions each spouse made during the marriage may be relevant to the overall analysis. New York’s equitable distribution framework specifically recognizes marriage as an economic partnership. Consider a marriage in which one spouse developed a demanding career while the other assumed greater responsibility for childcare, the household, or family logistics. Those roles may have allowed the higher-earning spouse to pursue opportunities that increased the family’s overall wealth. For the higher-earning wife, the objective should therefore not simply be to “protect my money.” It should be to understand what is marital, what may be separate, what the assets are actually worth, and how different settlement options could affect her future. What about child support? Being the higher earner may also affect child support. New York’s Child Support Standards Act provides a framework that considers parental income when calculating child support obligations. The law also addresses each parent’s proportional share of certain child-related expenses. Depending on the parenting arrangement and the circumstances of the family, a higher-earning mother may have a child support obligation. This is another area where relying on traditional assumptions can create problems. Being the mother does not automatically determine the financial outcome, just as earning more does not by itself determine custody or parenting time. For affluent families, the financial responsibilities associated with children can also extend beyond basic support. Childcare, health care, education, extracurricular activities, and other expenses may need to be addressed as part of a comprehensive parenting and financial plan. The higher earner may face legal fee considerations, too There is another financial issue successful women may not anticipate: attorney’s fees. New York law creates a rebuttable presumption that counsel fees should be awarded to the less monied spouse in matrimonial matters, with the goal of helping ensure that both parties have meaningful access to representation. As a result, a substantially higher-earning wife may need to consider the possibility of contributing toward her spouse’s legal or expert fees in addition to paying her own. That possibility makes thoughtful strategy particularly important. Unnecessary conflict can increase legal fees, valuation costs, expert expenses, and disruption for both spouses. When circumstances permit, resolving appropriate issues through negotiation, mediation, collaborative processes, or other settlement-focused approaches may allow families to preserve more of what they have worked hard to build. Financial success calls for strategic divorce planning Successful women are often accustomed to approaching major professional decisions with information, preparation, and strategy. Divorce deserves the same level of thought. Before making significant decisions, a higher-earning spouse should understand the complete financial picture: income, compensation, businesses, investments, retirement accounts, real estate, insurance, liabilities, taxes, and household cash flow. The conversation should go beyond simply asking, “Who gets what?” A settlement that appears reasonable today may look very different five or ten years from now. Retirement security, taxes, liquidity, business continuity, future earning potential, housing expenses, and the cost of maintaining two separate households can all affect whether a settlement truly protects someone’s long-term interests. Equality means leaving old assumptions behind Women’s Equality Day celebrates progress, and the changing role of women as leaders, professionals, entrepreneurs, investors, and financial decision-makers is part of that progress. But financial success comes with responsibilities as well as opportunities. When a wife earns more than her spouse, she should not enter divorce assuming traditional gender expectations will determine maintenance, property division, child support, or legal fees. She also should not assume that everything she has worked for is automatically at risk simply because she is the higher earner. The better approach is preparation: understand the financial landscape, distinguish assumptions from legal realities, and make decisions with the future in mind. The breadwinner may have changed. The need for thoughtful, individualized family law strategy has not. This article is provided for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Family law outcomes depend on the specific facts and circumstances of each matter. For more information, visit our website or call us at 518 412 4111 today! Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Debra Whitson Debra Whitson, Attorney, Mediator & Certified Divorce Specialist™ For the first half of her career, Debra Whitson was a prosecutor, and she spent the latter half specializing in Matrimonial and Family Law. She is an experienced mediator and collaborative divorce practitioner as well as a recognized expert in working with victims of domestic violence. Debra believes that legal battles are more harmful to families than helpful, and is passionate about helping people find ways to make their own decisions for their families, rather than leaving their outcomes in the hands of a stranger in a black robe. When court is unavoidable, Debra aims to educate and support people to make the legal process less costly, scary, uncertain, and stressful.

Written by Steve O’Brien, CEO & Director of SEO Steve O’Brien is CEO and Director of SEO at Woya Digital and founder of Fleet Street News. With 20 years of experience in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and digital marketing, he helps businesses build authority, trust and visibility across Google, AI search platforms and the wider digital ecosystem. Steve O’Brien has spent two decades building visibility for other people’s businesses, first as an independent SEO consultant, then as founder of SEO and AI visibility agency Woya, and now also through Fleet Street News, a guaranteed Digital PR platform. Twenty years in, he reflects on what has genuinely changed in search, why AI visibility has become the defining shift of his career so far, and the lessons that still shape how he advises clients in finance, healthcare, and other sectors today. I entered the digital marketing industry in 2006, working under my own name before Woya existed as a company. Back then, people still reached for the Yellow Pages more often than Google, and “optimisation” mostly meant stuffing a page with keywords and collecting as many backlinks as you could, however you could get them. Twenty years into SEO, I run two businesses built entirely around helping companies get found, trusted, and chosen online, and I’ve watched almost every assumption I started with get rebuilt from scratch at least once, most recently by AI. Search has gone from ten blue links to answers that AI systems generate, summarise, and hand to someone directly, and that shift is as big as everything else I’ve seen combined. Here are the seven lessons that have held up through every single change. 1. Every update kills a shortcut, not the industry I’ve worked through Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, the rise of mobile-first indexing, the local search boom, the content marketing years, the arrival of Digital PR as a serious discipline in its own right, and now the biggest shift yet: ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, and conversational AI platforms answering questions before anyone reaches a website at all. Each of these moments produced the same headline somewhere: “SEO is dead.” It never was. What actually dies each time is whichever shortcut the update was built to catch: thin content, spammy backlinks, keyword stuffing, and manipulated reviews. AI is doing the same thing again, just to a wider set of shortcuts and to businesses that never built real AI visibility in the first place. The businesses that survive every one of these shifts are the ones that were never relying on the shortcut to begin with. I still make a point of getting to events like BrightonSEO every year, not because the fundamentals change that often, but because the shortcuts being closed down do. Right now, AI visibility is where most of that change is happening, and it’s great to talk about it. 2. A ranking tells you almost nothing on its own If there’s one thing running an agency for this long has taught me, it’s that a page one position has always been a moment in time, not a result. But the gap between ranking and actually being seen has widened fast. SparkToro’s analysis of Similarweb clickstream data found that 68% of US Google searches in early 2026 ended without a single click, up from 60% just two years earlier. On queries that trigger an AI Overview specifically, the average zero-click rate climbs to 83%, compared with roughly 60% for standard queries. I’ve seen businesses rank well on Google and still be entirely absent the moment someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity for a recommendation instead, because they built for the algorithm and never built AI visibility alongside it. What actually holds up across both is broader than a ranking: technical foundations done properly, expert content, consistent information wherever a business appears online, genuine reviews, and credible coverage that backs up what the business says about itself. 3. AI Overviews have rewritten the economics of a click This isn’t a theory. It’s measured. Pew Research Center analysed 68,879 real Google searches from a panel of US adults and found that when an AI summary appeared, users clicked through to a traditional search result in just 8% of visits, compared with 15% when no summary appeared. Only 1% of visits clicked a link inside the AI summary itself, and users ended their browsing session immediately in 26% of AI summary visits, compared with 16% otherwise. At the same time, the audience asking questions of AI systems directly rather than searching at all keeps growing. OpenAI reported ChatGPT reaching 900 million weekly active users in February 2026, more than double the figure from the year before. A business that only measures itself against Google rankings is measuring less and less of where its actual audience is now. 4. Treat search like revenue, not a task Too many businesses still hand visibility off to someone and forget about it, treating it as a line item rather than a growth lever. That’s a harder habit to justify now that the return is being measured properly elsewhere. A 2026 Conductor survey of enterprise CMOs found that 97% of teams investing in AEO and GEO reported a measurable positive impact on the marketing funnel in 2025. Two decades of client work have shown me the same pattern at every scale. The businesses that treat search and AI visibility as commercially central, tied directly to revenue, retention, and reputation, are the ones that invest properly and stay with it long enough to see it compound. The ones that treat it as a task chase whatever’s trending that month and wonder why nothing has moved a year later. 5. Third-party trust became non-negotiable This is really why I built Fleet Street News. Search engines, and especially AI platforms, don’t just take a business’s word for its own credibility. They weigh what independent, credible third-party sources say about it too. That instinct isn’t new. Nielsen’s long-running global trust research has consistently found that upwards of 90% of consumers trust earned recommendations, from people they know or from credible third parties, above any form of paid advertising. Business overall still sits among the most trusted institutions globally at 64% trust, according to the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, provided that trust is earned rather than claimed. I built Fleet Street to be placement-led and fixed-price, with publication guaranteed within five days, precisely because that third-party validation has become one of the strongest AI visibility signals there is, particularly in the regulated sectors I’ve spent most of my career in: finance and healthcare, where every claim gets checked. 6. SEO, AEO and GEO are connected disciplines in SEO 2.0 This is where a lot of businesses get stuck, because they still treat SEO, AEO, and GEO as competing acronyms rather than one connected job. We’ve started calling it SEO 2.0, and it’s the thinking we build into every programme at Woya as the Woya Way. SEO is still the foundation, getting a site properly indexed and ranked. AEO structures what a business publishes so an AI system can lift it out and hand it to someone as the answer. GEO is the ongoing online authority work, including digital PR, brand mentions, and third-party signals, that gets a business actually cited inside an AI-generated response. Businesses know this matters. That same Conductor survey found 94% of enterprises plan to increase AEO and GEO investment in 2026, yet only around 20% have started meaningful implementation so far. That gap between intention and execution is exactly where the advantage sits for whoever moves first. So what do they mean? SEO: Search Engine Optimisation – Gets you indexed and ranked in traditional search. The foundation of everything else. AEO: Answer Engine Optimisation – Structures your content so AI systems surface it as the direct answer to a query. GEO: Generative Engine Optimisation – Builds the authority that gets your brand cited inside AI-generated responses from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini, plus AI friends. 7. The one thing that hasn’t moved Every platform shift I’ve lived through has ultimately come down to search engines, and now AI systems, getting better at identifying who genuinely deserves to be recommended. That was true when the Yellow Pages was still the first instinct, and it’s true with AI visibility and generative search today. I’m competitive by nature, on the track as much as in business, and the lesson from both is the same: define the objective, build the system properly, and execute with discipline rather than chasing whatever’s rewarded this quarter. Twenty years into SEO, that’s still the whole game. Get the trust right, on Google and in AI search, and the visibility follows it. If you want an honest read on where your business actually stands, on Google and in AI search, book a call with the team at Woya Digital. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Steve O'Brien Steve O’Brien, CEO & Director of SEO Steve O’Brien is CEO and Director of SEO at Woya Digital and founder of Fleet Street News. With 20 years of experience in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and digital marketing, he has worked through major shifts in search, from early algorithm updates and local SEO to Digital PR and AI-driven discovery. Steve helps businesses build online authority, improve visibility and strengthen trust across Google, AI platforms, media coverage and the wider digital ecosystem. His writing explores SEO, AI optimisation, Digital PR, reputation signals and how businesses can adapt as the way people search, compare and choose brands continues to change. His mission is to help businesses become more visible, more trusted and better positioned for growth in the AI era.

Scottsdale, Arizona – August 2026 – Desert Roots Wellness co-founder and certified holistic life coach Samka Keranovic has been named an Executive Contributor to Brainz Magazine, a global digital publication covering business, mindset, and leadership that reaches millions of readers worldwide. Through her contributions, Keranovic will share expert insights on burnout recovery, boundaries, people-pleasing, and authentic living – equipping high achievers, executives, and entrepreneurs with the practical tools to build lives that genuinely fit them. Keranovic brings more than 16 years of private coaching experience to the platform, along with over two decades of corporate leadership as a Vice President and Chief Operating Officer overseeing a $5.2 million P&L. Her work spans sales, marketing, HR, finance, and team leadership – experience that gives her a rare ability to address both the human and operational dimensions of burnout and self-abandonment. She is a certified Life Coach, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner, Neuroscience Coach, Trauma Healing Specialist, and Geo Love Healing Practitioner. “Most of what I write about, I have lived. The burnout, the people-pleasing, the quiet cost of building a life around everyone else’s expectations – I’ve been there, and I found a way out. My goal with Brainz Magazine is to bring that honest, practical perspective to a global audience that is ready for something real.” – Samka Keranovic, Co-Founder, Desert Roots Wellness Keranovic’s first article for Brainz Magazine, titled “Your Burnout Is Raising Your Kids,” explores the underexamined link between parental burnout and rising rates of teen anxiety and depression. The piece argues that children learn self-abandonment not from what parents say, but from the daily pattern of watching adults override their own needs in service of everyone else’s. The article will be among her first contributions to the platform. Desert Roots Wellness, co-founded by Keranovic and Tyler LaBarge in 2026, offers one-on-one coaching, digital programs, and self-paced toolkits for individuals and business owners navigating burnout, chronic indecision, and people-pleasing. The practice operates internationally with clients across the United States and Latin America. Keranovic’s work has previously been featured in Fast Company, Authority Magazine, and CHRO Daily. About Desert Roots Wellness Desert Roots Wellness is a holistic life coaching practice founded by Samka Keranovic and Tyler LaBarge. The practice works with high achievers, executives, entrepreneurs, and small business owners who are successful by external measures but privately exhausted – helping them break free from burnout, people-pleasing, and the cost of living by everyone else’s expectations. Desert Roots Wellness serves clients internationally from its base in Scottsdale, Arizona. Learn more at drwmbs.com. Media contact Samka Keranovic Co-Founder, Desert Roots Wellness 480-953-0443 press@drwmbs.com www.drwmbs.com

Written by Manuel Aragon, Tax Consultant & Advisory Planner Manuel Aragon is an entrepreneur out of Colorado with a deep background in business, Tax Prep, advisory, and planning. Has served as a Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Operations Manager, Finance Director, and Consultant. My life is a coat of 50 colors, and each one tells a part of a story, a story of pain and purpose, of dreams and despair, and of a divine hand weaving it all together. Just like Joseph, my journey has been marked by both incredible favor and profound suffering. The coat I wear is not just a piece of clothing, it’s a living symbol of my life’s narrative. A symbol of favoritism and a father's love My story began with a Golden Yellow light of promise, a time of childhood dreams and pure joy. I felt a unique sense of anointing, a gift from my Father that set me apart. This was my Royal Blue hope, a deep certainty of a future with purpose. This special garment of my being, woven with a Silver thread of clear thought and a Gold thread of joy, was a sign of my future purpose. But this very gift, my unique spirit, stirred a Scarlet jealousy in others. My very existence and simple happiness became a target. A cause of jealousy and hatred The coat became a constant, visible reminder to others that I was different. My natural inclinations, the Green of my growth, the Pink of my tenderness, and the Orange of my creativity, were seen as a form of arrogance. This fueled an existing resentment, leading to a betrayal that felt like a Crimson Red wound. My vibrant coat was torn from me, and my spirit was cast into a pit of despair. That's the Black of my story, a time of utter darkness and loneliness, a spiritual prison like the one Joseph was thrown into. It was a time of fear and hopelessness, yet I still studied and found favor in places that were meant to break me. A representation of birthright and future leadership In the pit and later in my own seasons of slavery and confinement, the coat was gone, but the anointing remained. The very Maroon bruise of my betrayal, the deep and painful injustice I endured, became a part of my story. My hard work was recognized, and I found a renewed sense of favor. This was my Brown consistency, my steady devotion to doing my best, no matter the circumstances. This earned me a position of trust, a time of Pure White innocence and peace. My ability to listen and offer insight, a kind of Olive wisdom, became a comfort to others in their own dark times. I was learning to be a leader, not through a title, but through service, using my gifts to bless others. My humble spirit, like a Tan foundation, was being prepared for a greater cause. A lesson in God's sovereign plan The destroyed coat set in motion a series of events that demonstrated a powerful truth: God can use difficult circumstances for good. The lies and betrayal I faced, symbolized by a Gray cloud of doubt, led to a time of solitude. In that low place, I learned to rely on God's favor in a new way. My quiet faith was a Beige foundation. My spiritual insight, my ability to see what others could not, became my Silver key to freedom. The journey from the prison to the palace felt like the bright, wide Sky Blue of a brand new day. I put on a new robe, not of my family, but of authority. It was a Purple of royalty and power. My rise to a position of leadership was a mosaic of new colors. My ability to plan was a bold Teal clarity, my leadership a Fuchsia boldness, and my healing spirit a Lime Green new beginning. A foreshadowing of God's redemptive purpose When those who had betrayed me re-entered my life, I had to face the hardest part of my story. The memory of their betrayal was a sharp Plum ache, but in that moment, I chose to forgive. This was my greatest act of strength. My forgiveness was a gentle Lavender grace, a choice to let go of bitterness. The Turquoise calm I felt was a testament to God's healing. My loyalty was a deep Cobalt Blue that had never truly faded. My life, with all its ups and downs, is a testament to the truth of Genesis 50:20: "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good." My coat is not a simple garment. It has the Mahogany of my family history, the Bronze of my resilience, the Aqua of my adaptability, the Ivory of my honesty, and the Yellow of my joy. It has the Rose of my love, the Jade of my desire to bring healing, and the Coral of my unique voice. It has the Periwinkle of my imagination, the Mint of my lightheartedness, the Indigo of my intuition, and the Garnet of my fortitude. It has the Pewter of my quiet determination, the Slate of my integrity, and the Ochre of my ancient wisdom. My coat is not a symbol of perfection, it's a testament to redemption. It shows that God can take the darkest threads of our lives and weave them into a magnificent, purposeful design. Every color, from the brightest Gold to the deepest Black, is a necessary part of the beautiful story of a life anointed by God's favor, a life that has been broken and, in the breaking, has found its greatest purpose. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Manuel Aragon Manuel Aragon, Tax Consultant & Advisory Planner Manuel Aragon has elite expertise in tax preparation, accounting, finance, cash planning, and tax strategy. Manuel has delivered modern, innovative financial solutions, driving growth and efficiency for multiple companies in Colorado. His leadership and approach have solidified a reputation for excellence, onboarding, and overall client satisfaction. Continues to serve in multiple roles across the Front Range as a Tax Preparer, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Operations Manager, Finance Director, and Consultant.

Written by Lisa Decker, Owner of Aligned Fitness Lisa Decker has been in the field of posture alignment and biomechanics for 20+ years and has helped thousands of people free themselves from chronic pain. She is the owner of Aligned Fitness Posture Therapy & Qigong in San Jose, CA, where she specializes in many areas of holistic wellness. Arthritis is diagnosed and blamed for practically any joint pain in the body, but what exactly is arthritis? How do you get it? And most importantly, how do you get rid of it? Arthritis is defined as inflammation and stiffness of a joint. This occurs when the cartilage and fluid surrounding a joint get inflamed. The important question we must ask is, “What might be causing this inflammation?” It’s convenient to blame arthritis for one’s pain and treat it with injections, anti-inflammatories or in severe cases surgery; however, the body rarely inflames for no reason. Root causes of arthritis Our body is designed to protect us, and inflammation is its defensive mechanism. When our body loses its natural alignment, movement patterns become dysfunctional, and this causes friction and irritation at the joints. Swelling and restriction then occur to prevent damage. This friction and irritation are not a disease; in fact, they are our body’s way of protecting us! Genetics or age? When a client comes in with a diagnosis of arthritis, they often believe it's due to age. I question this because if we have arthritis in one knee, why does the other knee have no symptoms? Aren't they both the same age? Furthermore, we often see arthritis resolve only to return, which certainly wouldn't occur due to age. Many people also believe their arthritis is caused by genetics. However, when we reestablish function, the pain is often alleviated, generating the question, "Did we change their genetic code?" Probably not. What more likely happened is that we reestablished functional alignment and mobility, leading to less friction and inflammation at the joint. Is it the position or condition? Arthritis may be the condition we are experiencing, but what we should be asking is, "What is the position of the joint in which we are experiencing this symptom?" As previously mentioned, when our structure is out of alignment, muscular compensations occur, and range of motion becomes dysfunctional. Oxygen flow is then restricted from getting to the tissues. In some cases, significant degeneration can occur at a joint, which may warrant surgery; however, in many cases, when the body is realigned and full range of motion is restored, the joint receives the oxygen and blood flow it needs, and the acute pain resolves. Symptom versus Cause It's important to look beyond the joint in question when treating arthritis. Our medical profession often focuses on the symptom, but we must remember that our body works as a system. The position of each joint affects those above and below it. For example, if you have arthritis in your knee, it's wise to assess the mobility and function of your hip and ankle. It’s important not to only treat the arthritic joint, as the whole body is connected and always working as a unit. We must restore function to the entire kinetic chain for optimal physical health and integrity. You are not broken! The most important thing to understand is that you are not fragile or broken. The body is a resilient system, and when alignment is restored and muscles are brought back into balance, function is returned. As a result, the body no longer has a reason to protect the joints, and we typically see a decrease in pain symptoms. Once we understand the root cause of arthritis, we can educate and empower ourselves to resolve this painful symptom once and for all. Below are some steps to take if you have been diagnosed with arthritis: Schedule a posture assessment and become educated and aware of your alignment. Assess your mobility so you can understand where function may need to be restored. Address muscular imbalances and asymmetries not only where you are experiencing symptoms but with all other joints as well. Restore efficient movement patterns and functional biomechanics. Strengthen the muscles around your joints to keep them from rubbing against one another and wearing down cartilage. Find the optimal balance between activity and rest; excessive movement can cause wear and tear, but being too sedentary can be even harder on the body. If you are playing a specific sport or engaging in one type of exercise program, switch it up. Diversity is essential for physical health. If you have a high BMI, taking weight off an arthritic joint can help prevent excessive wear and tear. Develop your somatic awareness. Ask yourself, "What movements feel good? What movements cause pain? Are there movements that feel different right to left?" Educate yourself! Becoming aware of your posture and movement patterns is often the first step in healing. If you are interested in a free 30-minute posture analysis, click here. Visit my website for more info! Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Read more from Lisa Decker Lisa Decker, Owner of Aligned Fitness Lisa Decker began her work 25 years ago as a personal trainer but realized quickly the importance of addressing dysfunctional alignment and muscular compensations before strengthening. She has a master's degree in Human Movement, a 3-year certification in medical Qigong, and multiple certifications in biomechanics, spinal decompression, posture therapy, breathwork, and corrective exercise. She is the owner of Aligned Fitness in San Jose, CA, where she specializes in helping others restore functional alignment and movement patterns to reduce chronic pain symptoms. Her goal is to educate and empower people to understand the root cause of their pain so they can safely and pain-free return to enjoying the activities they love.

Rooted in decades of groundbreaking research alongside legendary track figures. This interview explores how data-driven biomechanics can unlock peak athletic speed while protecting against injury. Discover practical advice on front-side mechanics, the role of AI in elite coaching, and actionable strategies to build faster, healthier athletes. Dr. Amber Murphy, Chief Executive Officer What first drew you from competing as a collegiate hurdler into a career studying the science of speed? I began collaborating with my father, former 400-meter hurdle World Record holder and 1972 Olympic silver medalist, Dr. Ralph Mann, as a child, filming track meets. Then, when he began to research and build our proprietary software, I digitized the film by hand and did statistical analysis as a teen. As an adult, I worked beside him applying biomechanics on the track. My experience as an athlete and my love for track and field motivated me to stay in the field and pursue my doctorate in exercise science. My experience in collegiate athletics has helped me when working with sprinters and hurdlers on the track and with combine athletes. Understanding the collegiate athletic experience has enabled me to be a better biomechanics teacher for our current collegiate athletes. After more than 20 years researching sprint mechanics, what discovery has had the biggest impact on how athletes train today? The biomechanical discovery that has had the biggest impact on how athletes train for sprinting today is that front side mechanics are faster than backside mechanics. Front side mechanics means that the sprint motion occurs in front of the body as much as possible, not behind the body, which is backside mechanics. This enables the athlete to go from low to high in the sprint and start. The motion of the legs in front of the body allows the athlete to get a higher knee position while in the air so they can attack the ground at touchdown. This facilitates a pulling motion on and off the ground instead of pushing. As an added bonus, front side mechanics help prevent Achilles and hamstring injuries compared to backside mechanics. You have worked alongside the late Dr. Ralph Mann and co-authored The Science of Speed. What do you hope coaches take away from the decades of research behind the book? I hope coaches feel empowered by The Science of Speed. Too often, science and math are only accessible to academics. My main goal in authoring this book was to make the science behind performance and injury prevention understandable and accessible to everyone who has a curiosity about it. Coaches can be armed with knowledge and be confident they are teaching proper mechanics while improving their athletes' performance and helping them prevent injury. I also wrote this for athletes because often athletes train because their coach tells them to, but they do not understand why. This book can help athletes buy into training and, in turn, help coaches get them excited about getting faster. AI is becoming more common in sport. Where do you believe it can genuinely improve coaching, and where should human expertise still lead the way? We began using AI about 6 years ago, well before it was mainstream. What is misunderstood about AI is that it is a tool that can be used well or misused. I had to teach our AI program about mechanics. I would do an analysis, and it would do the same one, and I would tell it what it was doing wrong. We did this over and over until it stopped making mistakes. So, if a coach is using AI, the question should be, who taught this AI model about coaching? If it is a good, well-taught AI model, then it is a tool that a coach can use, combined with their knowledge. Another piece is that AI does not understand the complexity of human relationships, so the human element is not there. We call that the art of coaching, and that can never be replaced. Speed is often viewed as a natural talent. Which biomechanical factors do you think are most misunderstood by athletes and coaches? Talent is important. That is a given, but applying proper mechanics to running can make anyone faster. One biomechanical factor that is misunderstood by coaches and athletes is the importance of proper foot strike. Foot strike is how you land on your foot when you first touch the ground. We like all of our runners to land on their fifth metatarsal, which is the outside of the front of the foot by the pinkie toe. Once they land on the fifth metatarsal, we like them to roll over to the big toe at takeoff from the ground. This utilizes the natural spring of the big toe. If the athlete lands on the midfoot or heel, not only do they sacrifice that natural spring, but they also spend longer on the ground because they have to roll through the foot to get to takeoff. When you analyze an athlete using CompuSport's technology, what are the first movement patterns you look for that reveal both performance potential and injury risk? Once we measure the athlete and build their sprint model, we have them run through the cameras, and we film the run. The athlete and coach then come over, and we look at the run. The first thing we do is take the athlete to touchdown. At touchdown, when they first touch the ground, we are looking for three things. First, we look at foot strike, are they on their fifth metatarsal? Next, we look at the knees, are they together at touchdown? Finally, we look at the trunk, is it too flexed or too extended? All those body positions are indicative of speed potential and injury risk. The wonderful thing is we have ways of correcting these body positions, and we teach the coach and athlete about them. For coaches without access to advanced biomechanical tools, what practical changes can they make to help athletes run faster and stay healthier? Practical changes that can help athletes include getting educated in all aspects of coaching and having resources to refer to when an athlete needs specific help. From a biomechanics standpoint, this can include coaches and athletes reading "The Science of Speed." Next, apply the concepts in the book on a daily basis in training. There are biomechanical concepts discussed in the book that do not require any tools except filming on a cell phone. This empowers coaches and athletes to diagnose and work on certain body mechanics errors. In addition, if the resources allow, having a paid biomechanics consultant who helps periodically with mechanics and feedback when needed. The same concept can be applied to all the other aspects of coaching, including strength, nutrition, general health, flexibility, and all the other factors discussed in chapter 9 of the book. Throughout your career, how has your philosophy of "better movement creates faster, healthier athletes" shaped the way you approach both research and coaching? My philosophy, "better movement creates faster, healthier athletes," has informed my research and on-track teaching in a specific way. I have gathered an immense amount of data on elite and sub-elite athletes. I have done extensive statistical analysis on these data. My analysis has shown what body angles and performance data, like ground time, are most closely correlated with velocity. In addition, I have done research on the mechanisms of hamstring and Achilles injuries in running. So, when I go out on the track, I am giving informed feedback based on all this research. The mechanical variables I teach are not based on my opinion, they are based on hard data. When I am on the track, I share my knowledge and teach and empower athletes and coaches to see and fix mechanical errors so they can continue to get faster and stay healthy after I leave. If every coach could embrace one principle from sports biomechanics, what would you want that principle to be and why? If every coach could embrace one principle from sports biomechanics, it would be that teaching proper running mechanics is as important as fitness, race management, strength, recovery, and all other elements of a coaching program. The benefits of front side mechanics versus backside mechanics cannot be overstated. If a coach is not teaching front side mechanics in daily training, they are missing a big piece of the performance improvement and injury prevention puzzle. Injuries in athletes, especially young athletes, can be physically and mentally devastating and potentially career-ending. Why not add the element of running mechanics to a coaching program to not only improve performance, but also avoid these injuries? Getting well educated in running mechanics and then using that information on the track will go a long way toward this goal. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Dr. Amber Murphy

Written by Diondra Filicetti, Team Engagement & Communication Expert Diondra Filicetti is a Learning and Development professional, best-selling author, and two-time TEDx speaker. She specializes in team engagement, leadership effectiveness, and communication, helping organizations create motivated, high-performing teams. You just finished ranting to your friends about a topic that you’re passionate about. You take a deep breath and then finish with, “Thank you for coming to my TED talk.” But have you ever thought about actually doing one? TED and TEDx talks are known worldwide for being concise, idea-packed talks that offer a fresh perspective on just about anything. Being a TED or TEDx speaker not only enhances your bio but also carries real prestige in business, education, and career circles. So maybe it is time to get on that stage. The good news: the process is far less arduous than most people assume. In this guide, I'll walk you through where to begin and everything you need to know, starting with a question I get all the time: what's the difference between a TED talk and a TEDx talk? What’s the difference between TED and TEDx? TED Talks are put on by TED, a global nonprofit dedicated to spreading ideas. It all began in 1984, when Richard Saul Wurman brought together three fields, technology, entertainment, and design (that's where the name TED comes from), for one conference. That first event included demos of the compact disc, the ebook, and cutting-edge 3D graphics. Today, TED conferences are large events run directly by TED on a global scale. Learn more about TED's history. TEDx events are named after their location (think TEDxToronto or TEDxStanfordUniversity) and, unlike TED itself, they're independently organized by local teams under an official license from TED. They're usually smaller in scale, and TED does not directly organize things like speaker selection or ticket sales for individual TEDx events. Instead, organizers use the TEDx platform to spark local engagement around “ideas worth spreading.” Learn more about how TEDx differs from TED. My experience with TEDx I remember when a TEDx talk was just an image on my vision board. At the time, I had no clue how to actually get on the coveted TEDx stage, but I was determined to figure it out! Now, after doing it twice, I'm here to make that path a little easier for you by sharing the steps to becoming a TEDx speaker and how to give yourself the best possible shot at getting your application accepted. P.S. If you’re interested in the backstory, check this out: How I Did 2 TEDx Talks in 2 Days. I will say, my two TEDx experiences were quite different from one another. However, this gave me some insight into what different organizers might be looking for and the different ways they might run their events. That said, here’s where you can start your TEDx journey: How to become a TEDx speaker Find TEDx events near you Start by finding TEDx events near you with upcoming dates. TED's website has a full directory of registered TEDx events, complete with an interactive map, which looks like this: You can filter by location, year, and month. Some organizations plan more than a year out, so it's worth casting a wide net and creating a large list of TEDx events that you plan to apply to! Finding the events is the easy part. The harder part is figuring out application deadlines, how to apply, and who to contact on the organizing committee. This can vary between events. Check each event's official website and public social media channels to see whether they accept speaker applications and how they want applications submitted. Be prepared to put in some legwork, and sync your calendar with submission deadlines and application links the moment you find them. Submit your application Every TEDx organization runs its application process a little differently. Some want a detailed outline of your talk, while others ask for a video submission. Whatever the format, be meticulous. This application is the organizing committee's first impression of you, and competition can be fierce. So, treat your application like it matters, because it does. Apply early Don't wait until the deadline is staring you down. TEDx applications can open months in advance, and applying early gives you plenty of time to make sure your application is complete and address any issues before the deadline. In my experience, early applicants may also have more time to go back and forth with organizers, refine their pitch if needed, or address any questions before the lineup gets locked in. Applying early also works in your favour logistically. If you don't hear back from one event committee, you'll have lots of time to apply to another TEDx event in that same season rather than missing your window and having to wait until the following year. So, once you find an event that fits, get your application in as soon as you're ready. Tips for a successful application Be on theme Each TEDx event will typically have a theme. For instance, “Ripple Effects” was the theme for one of mine, but it could really be anything. When organizers curate the speaker lineup, they're looking for talks that fit that theme. For example, a talk on nanoscience doesn't exactly fit a theme of "Communication," so you may need to adjust your angle for a stronger connection. If possible, include an explanation with key points on how your talk will speak to the event’s theme. Prepare a pitch Draft a summary of your idea (ideally between 300 and 800 words) and explain why you are the best person to speak on it. Remember that organizers go through dozens and dozens of applications, all with the goal of delivering an excellent audience experience. So, highlight what the audience will take away from your talk and include any interesting elements that can help you stand out. Plus, this is a great opportunity to drive home how your talk fits the event’s theme. Submit a video sample A video sample really brings your application to life! Some organizations don't require this, but if the application allows additional materials, I'd recommend submitting one anyway. Aim for a short clip (1 to 2 minutes), either delivering a short sample section of your talk or speaking directly about what your talk will cover. This is especially valuable if you have speaking experience or strong articulation skills. It shows organizers that you're meant for the stage, and it gives them a better sense of your delivery style. Even an unpolished clip filmed on your phone can work, as long as your energy and clarity come through. Remember, it’s more about your presence than the production value at this stage in the process. I'd also recommend sending links to any other speaking footage you have if the application allows it. Think of these like the experience section of your resume; they show that you have the expertise that makes you fit for the job! I hope to be seeing your TEDx talk Perhaps this all seems overly simple, but it really is about getting the basics right. That image on my vision board only turned into the TEDx stage because I decided to break down the process and give it my best shot. Now you have the roadmap: find the right events, understand their theme, craft a pitch that shows your "aha moment," and back it up with a video that lets organizers see (and feel) your presence on stage. So, if you've got a talk brewing inside you (the one your friends keep hearing about), it’s time to find your local TEDx event, start your application, and give yourself the shot you deserve! Won’t it be nice to say, “Thank you for coming to my TED talk,” for real? Good luck! Curious how my TEDx talks went? Check them out below: Unlocking team success: 5 crucial environmental factors | Diondra Filicetti | TEDxOshawa and How to develop engaged and motivated teams | Diondra Filicetti | TEDxEtobicoke. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Diondra Filicetti Diondra Filicetti, Team Engagement & Communication Expert Diondra Filicetti is a distinguished Learning and Development professional, best-selling author, and two-time TEDx speaker. As the founder of Driven By Co., she helps organizations enhance performance through engaging workshops, leadership programs, and communication training. Her book Engagement Economics explores how employee engagement drives profitability and success. With expertise in adult learning and instructional design, Diondra has empowered thousands of professionals to lead with purpose, connect effectively, and inspire growth.

After experiencing both significant weight loss and weight regain firsthand, Talia Mollica knows that creating a healthier life is about far more than a number on the scale. As a weight loss specialist, wellness coach, fitness instructor, and advocate for sustainable habits, Talia uses her own journey (including the setbacks) to help women approach health with more compassion, consistency, and confidence. In this interview, Talia opens up about what she learned from having to rebuild her health a second time, why restrictive dieting and quick fixes often fall short, and the simple habits that can create lasting change. She also shares her perspective on self-abandonment, rebuilding trust after setbacks, making healthy eating realistic (and fun), and what she wants every woman who has regained weight to know before starting again. Talia Mollica, Weight Loss Specialist & Wellness Coach You have experienced both significant weight loss and weight regain, so how has that journey shaped the way you coach women today? After experiencing both significant weight loss and weight regain, I’ve learned that getting healthy isn’t about reaching a final destination; it’s about building habits and a lifestyle that can support you through every season of life. It is going to look different for everyone. With that in mind, my approach to coaching looks at the bigger picture and focuses on wellness as a whole. Movement, nutrition, stress, sleep, relationships, and the environments we live in all play an important role in our overall health and well-being. Rather than creating a one-size-fits-all nutrition and exercise guide and wishing my clients luck, I take the time to learn about their actual lives. I ask questions like: What foods do you enjoy? What does your work schedule look like? What challenges are you facing? What does your typical day look like? From there, I build a plan that actually fits their life. What also sets my coaching apart is the accountability aspect. I create daily trackers for my clients to help them stay accountable. I personally experienced how effective daily habit tracking could be, so I knew it was something I wanted to incorporate into my coaching. Ultimately, taking the time to truly get to know my clients and understand their day-to-day lives is what I believe makes my approach different. I don’t just give someone a plan; I meet them where they are and help them build. After rebuilding your health a second time, what changed about your approach that made it feel more sustainable? After rebuilding my health a second time, I realized it was time to take the pressure off myself. Although I thought that I had mastered all the healthy habits the first time around and had even worked through a lot of my negative self-talk, I was still putting an incredible amount of pressure on myself. If I missed a workout or didn’t post a recipe, I would get down on myself or feel anxious about it. Which is crazy when you consider that I share recipes simply because I genuinely enjoy cooking, creating, and inspiring others. I don’t even get paid to do it! When I went through the 100-pound regain, I completely shut down and went missing in action from social media for a while. I was not living out those healthy habits, so of course I felt I had nothing to share. But what that time away taught me was that it is okay to pull back sometimes, and it is not the end of the world if I miss a workout or a healthy recipe post. Taking the pressure off myself has made this process much more sustainable, and a lot more enjoyable as well. You often encourage women to avoid restrictive dieting, so what habits have the biggest impact without making people feel deprived? Something I truly live by is finding a healthier alternative for those not-so-healthy cravings. For example, if I am craving a double cheeseburger with loaded French fries and a chocolate milkshake, I will create a recipe using real, whole ingredients that satisfies that same craving. Not only does it do the job, but it is also a fun way to get creative in the kitchen and learn how to make food that makes you feel good. One recipe that comes to mind is my Sweet Potato Nachos. If I ever feel like nachos, but want to avoid feeling like crap, I will whip these up, and not only do I feel good after eating them, I feel proud that I made a homemade meal. This isn’t to say that I will never eat a fast food meal, but I have created and sustained healthy habits over a long period of time, and I’ve noticed that my cravings and preferences have changed, and I genuinely enjoy whole-food meals. I take the same approach with my clients. I’ll provide healthier alternatives to foods they’re craving so they never feel like they have to completely deprive themselves. If they want to go out to eat with friends or family, they know that one meal isn’t going to derail their progress. It truly comes down to moderation and making this a lifestyle rather than another “diet” or “quick fix.” Social media is full of quick fixes and dramatic transformations, so what conversations about weight loss do you think deserve more attention? Social media is both a blessing and a curse, and I encourage all of you to use your discernment when it comes to absorbing information online. I use my platform to share realistic healthy recipes, habits, workouts, and inspiration. But there is a lot of marketing in the health and fitness industry designed to make people believe they need the newest product, supplement, or program to succeed. You’ll see peptides, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) medications, fat burners, detox teas, 30-day challenges, and so many other things being marketed as the answer. What often gets left out of that conversation is that there is no true “start” and “end” date when it comes to a weight-loss transformation. It is a lifelong journey. Just as life fluctuates and ebbs and flows, so can our weight. That's something I learned after going through my first major weight-loss transformation. At the time, I thought it was impressive that I lost 75 pounds within ten months. But looking back, the timeline meant very little. I eventually gained that weight back, and then some. What mattered was the knowledge I gained, the healthy habits that I learned, and how good I felt on a daily basis. So, my best advice is to use discernment when it comes to what you read and see online. If you want to make a change and get healthier, know that it is going to take time, and that is okay. Because it is worth it every single time. Why do you think so many women struggle to put their own health first, even when they know it should be a priority? Women are often socialized to put others before themselves. We are nurturers, caregivers, and often incredibly empathetic. If you are anything like me, you may even be a people pleaser at times. We are taught from a young age to say yes, to be accommodating, and to be “easy”. Having strong boundaries and standards for ourselves can be perceived as being “difficult.” But what I’ve learned is that having those boundaries is actually one of the highest forms of self-respect. For my entire life, I was so caught up in what everyone else around me needed that I neglected myself and my health. Because that is all I knew, I thought I was doing the “right” thing. What I didn’t realize was that constantly putting myself and my health on the back burner was teaching me that I didn’t matter. That led to a lack of self-respect and, ultimately, a lack of self-trust. Honestly, it was affecting every area of my life. I felt unhappy, drained, insecure, and miserable. That inevitably bleeds into your relationships and the way you show up for the people around you. When I’m healthy, I’m happy. When I’m happy, I’m able to show up with more energy and light. I’m more present for the people I love, and that energy is contagious. So taking care of yourself isn’t selfish. In my experience, it actually allows you to show up as the best version of yourself for everyone around you. It’s a win-win. What is one simple change you encourage new clients to make before worrying about calories or the number on the scale? One simple change I encourage new clients to make before worrying about calories or the number on the scale is to get clear on their intention, their “why.” Why are you making this commitment to change? If the answer is, “I want to lose 20 pounds before my engagement party in two months to look good in my dress,” I’m going to encourage you to rethink that intention. But if the answer is, “I want to feel like the strongest, most fulfilled, and happiest version of myself so I can be fully present on my wedding day,” then BINGO. We have a deal. Calories, macros, and a number on the scale can all be useful tools, but none of them matter if you are going into this with the wrong intention. Because I promise you, even if you hit the “goal” number that you have set for yourself, if you haven’t taken care of what’s going on inside of your heart and mind, you are still going to be left feeling empty, unfulfilled, and unhappy. I want the complete opposite of that for my clients. Healthy recipes have been part of your journey from the beginning, so how do you make nutritious eating feel realistic for people with busy lives? As someone who has juggled working multiple jobs while studying for certifications and going to school, and, at times, working 50-plus hours a week in-office, I know how challenging it can feel to make nutritious eating a priority. But it is possible. With intention and a deep level of devotion to yourself, I truly believe you can set aside 30 minutes to an hour each week to prepare simple, nutritious meals. “Healthy eating” can have such a negative connotation, when in reality it can simply mean prioritizing real, whole ingredients and creating balanced meals that you genuinely enjoy. I do not believe in restricting or completely cutting out foods. I know we all hate to hear it, but consistency and moderation really are key. I create meal plans for my clients based on what foods they actually enjoy. Most weeks, my clients may eat some of the same meals repeatedly, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Choosing yourself and making your health a priority is already challenging enough, so I take the guesswork out of it by providing meal plans, recipes, and resources that make healthy eating feel manageable. When I first started sharing recipes online in 2020, it was during quarantine, so I had a lot more time on my hands. I was using recipes with lots of different ingredients that many people probably didn’t have sitting in their kitchen. My approach now is much different. The recipes I share on Instagram use minimal ingredients, and most of them are kitchen staples people already have on hand. And they still taste delicious! You have spoken openly about self-abandonment and starting over, so what helped you rebuild trust in yourself after hitting rock bottom again? What felt different this time around was that I stopped living up to the standards that everybody else around me had for me. I stopped doing the things that everyone else told me I should be doing, and I started choosing a life that was actually aligned with my values, goals, and dreams. It sounds simple, right? You might think, “Well Talia, why weren’t you doing that in the first place?” I spent my entire life shrinking myself to appease the people and the world around me. I was told I should graduate high school, go to college, get a 9-5 job, retire at 65. So, that was the trajectory I was on, and I was absolutely miserable. This has nothing to do with being lazy or not having a great work ethic. I was busting my ass, but for all the wrong reasons, and I was left completely empty and drained. I thought I was doing everything “right”. But, at what cost? My health was suffering, and I was so unhappy on a day-to-day basis. I knew there was more to life. I got a preview of it in 2020 when I lost 75 pounds, discovered how passionate I was about helping others live healthier, more fulfilled lives, and felt genuinely content and happy. I knew I needed to find my way back to that version of myself. So, in January 2026, I quit my 9-5 job and chose the life I knew was waiting for me. It has been anything but easy, but I wake up every single day excited again. I chose this life; I get to wake up each day and become a better version of myself while helping other women do the same. If someone feels discouraged because they have regained weight, what would you want them to remember before they begin again? I would want them to remember the simple truth that this is a lifelong journey. Life ebbs and flows, and so can the number on the scale. Honestly, the least important or interesting thing about you or your life is that number. I remember exactly how I felt when I lost 75 pounds and then, after just a couple of years, gained 100 pounds back. I felt doomed. I felt like all of the work I had put in went to waste, and I felt like a complete failure. But what I didn’t realize at the time was none of it was a waste. I was not “starting from scratch,” but from experience. I had learned many lessons over the years while I was gaining that weight back. I was in environments and relationships that were not supporting my health or wellbeing, and through that experience, I learned to have compassion for myself. I acknowledged that I was going through an incredibly difficult time and that I was in a very low place, but I didn’t use that as an excuse to stay there. Instead, I learned how to create boundaries, how to leave when it was time to leave, whether that meant a job, a relationship, or an environment, and how important it is to prioritize my health and well-being. Putting your health first is not selfish. In my opinion, it is one of the most selfless things you can do because when you become a healthier, happier version of yourself, you are able to fully show up and be present in every area of your life. By becoming a healthier version of yourself, you can inspire the people around you to do the same. So if you’ve regained weight, please remember this: You are not starting from scratch. You are starting from experience. Follow me on Instagram for more info! Read more from Talia Mollica

Written by Christopher A. Suchánek, Founder, Chief Strategy Officer, and Speaker Chris Suchánek is the Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Firm Media, an award-winning national marketing agency specializing in helping plastic surgery, oral surgery, and med spa practices thrive. For most of my life, I thought my childhood was normal. When you are raised in an abusive family, you do not know you are living inside dysfunction because dysfunction is all you have ever known. Chaos feels like love. Walking on eggshells feels like respect. Keeping secrets feels like loyalty. A taxed nervous system does not feel like trauma. It simply feels like life. You do not realize you are surviving because survival is all you have ever experienced. Hypervigilance, people pleasing, perfectionism, and overexplaining do not feel abnormal. They become your personality. Until one day, you realize they were never your personality at all. They were your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do: keep you alive. My sister could no longer carry that weight. She folded under the pressure and took her own life. Even then, I could not see what had happened. Our family had spent years assigning her the role of the “crazy one.” She was the black sheep, the difficult one, the unstable one, the problem. That story protected the rest of us from asking a much harder question: What if she was not the problem? What if the system was? It was easier to believe she was broken than to admit we were all living inside something deeply unhealthy. Years after losing my sister, the spotlight shifted. The same manipulation, blame, guilt, and character assassination that had once been directed at her was now directed at me. I was being handed the black sheep hat. For the first time, I saw the pattern clearly. The black sheep is not usually the bad child. The black sheep is the one who refuses to participate in the lie. Healthy families solve problems. Dysfunctional families assign them. Someone must carry the blame so everyone else can avoid looking in the mirror. Recognizing that truth sent me on a journey of healing. I began learning about complex trauma, not because I wanted to relive my past, but because I wanted to understand why, after building successful businesses and raising a family, I still felt like I was surviving instead of living. What I discovered changed everything: my childhood had not stayed behind me. It had simply changed jobs. As I learned more about trauma, I began recognizing parts of myself that I had mistaken for personality traits. Hypervigilance became the ability to anticipate business problems before anyone else. People pleasing became exceptional customer service. Overexplaining looked like communication. Isolation looked like independence. Freezing looked like staying calm under pressure. Self-abandonment looked like sacrifice. Shame became relentless achievement. For years, other people praised these qualities. So did I. But healing taught me something I never expected. Many of the traits that helped make me successful were not strengths. They were survival skills. They were not flaws or weaknesses. They were brilliant adaptations created by a child’s nervous system trying to survive an unsafe environment. The problem was not that I developed them. The problem was believing I still needed them. Hypervigilance was not always intuition. Sometimes it was my nervous system expecting danger. People pleasing was not always kindness. Sometimes it was the fear that saying no would cost me love. Overexplaining was not always transparency. Sometimes it was an attempt to prove I was not the problem before someone else decided I was. The greatest gift trauma recovery gave me was not discovering how broken I was. It was discovering how resourceful I had been. Every one of those responses existed for one reason: to keep me alive. But the behaviors that protect us as children can imprison us as adults. That realization changed how I lead. The dynamics we learn in childhood can quietly follow us into the workplace, shaping how we communicate, respond to conflict, and approach accountability. I believe healthy organizations address challenges directly and constructively without assigning blame or creating a villain. As a leader, I strive to build a culture where accountability exists without humiliation, and people feel empowered, even when the conversation is difficult. That lesson did not come from business school. It came from surviving an abusive family. Today, I experience something I never thought was possible: freedom. I have the freedom to be 100 percent unapologetically myself, not because everyone accepts me or understands me, but because I no longer need their permission to be who I am. I think about my sister often. I wonder what her life might have looked like if someone had told her she was not crazy, broken, or the problem. She was carrying a burden that never belonged to her. I cannot change what happened to her, but I can honor her by refusing to continue the cycle. I can tell the truth, build healthy relationships, create healthy organizations, and refuse to participate in character assassination disguised as love. If you have ever been called too sensitive, too emotional, too difficult, or the problem, ask yourself one question: Who benefits from you believing that? The black sheep is not the person who breaks the family. More often than not, the black sheep is the first person courageous enough to stop pretending the family was not already broken. I once believed the greatest achievement of my life was building successful businesses. It was not. My greatest achievement has been becoming myself. Not the version trauma created or fear protected. Just me. Unapologetically. Completely. Free. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info. Read more from Christopher A. Suchánek Christopher A. Suchánek, Founder, Chief Strategy Officer, and Speaker Chris Suchánek is the Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Firm Media, an award-winning national marketing agency specializing in helping plastic surgery, oral surgery, and med spa practices thrive. With over 25 years of experience spanning the entertainment and specialty medical sectors, Chris has worked with iconic brands like Warner Bros., MTV, and EMI Music, earning international acclaim, including a Grammy Award with Brainstorm Artists International.