Had an AHA or Insight? Share it:

Alice Kao on daily authorship, childhood trauma, and six climbing gyms.

When Alice Kao was three years old, her mother walked out the door carrying two large suitcases and did not turn around. When she was fourteen, her mother dropped her off alone in America near a school with some cash and left. Alice spent the next thirty years running a story about what that meant , that she was not smart enough, not pretty enough, not worth staying for. That story became the engine. It drove her through surviving alone as a teenager in a country where she did not belong, through a devastating heartbreak in Hong Kong, through building Sender One Climbing into six locations across Southern California and raising six million dollars from 115 community investors.

Then she found out the way she interpreted her story was dead wrong. The facts were not what she had believed for thirty years. The wound was real. The story was not.

And the voice that generated it is still there every single morning. It still wants to tell that story.

If you have ever woken up and felt the weight of a story you cannot shake, the one that says you are not smart enough, not ready, not worth the room you are about to walk into , this episode is the one you need to hear. Because Alice did not heal the wound. She built a daily discipline around deciding what it means. Every morning she chooses who is at the keyboard through authorship and it is the most underrated business skill a founder can develop. Write your own story.

In this episode we go into the phone call that broke the story open, the morning practice Alice has built around narrative authorship, and why imposter syndrome does not have to be gone before you can build something extraordinary.

About Alice Kao

Alice discovered climbing while living and working in London in 2008, following a difficult breakup. She was inspired by the healing and self-discovery that climbing brought her, which led her to co-found Sender One in 2011 upon returning to the United States with her business partners.

Alice hates following rules but loves rallying people to believe in an idea. She wears her heart on her sleeve and is not afraid to cry in meetings. She was born and raised in Taiwan and moved to the US when she was 14. Alice's superpower is her ability to ask for help relentlessly, because no one has all the answers!

Connect with Alice Kao

Website | LinkedIn

_____________________
We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you.

Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared.

Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com)

Follow us on Instagram:
Check us out on Tik Tok:
Work With Us

Had an AHA or Insight? Share it:

Tarkan Salar on Living Inside an Unfinished Transformation

Tarkan Salar did not lose his business. He dismantled it. Deliberately, painfully, over eighteen months, canceling contracts, unwinding supplier relationships, letting go of nearly 2,000 employees, absorbing millions in losses, all while his marriage fell apart, his father died, and the people closest to him told him he was making a mistake.

He had built a $50Mill dollar fashion company supplying H&M and major European retailers. Family members were on payroll. His identity, his relationships, his entire world was wrapped inside that company. He walked away from all of it because he could not do it anymore. He had no plan. He had a one-way ticket to Bali and left it all behind.

The hustle part is done. What has not arrived yet is everything else.
The people he thought were friends turned away the moment he stopped being useful. The family members he had carried for years are still angry. And Tarkan is in what he calls the void, no identity, no clear purpose, no confirmation that any of it is going to lead somewhere worth going. The next chapter is not here. He is living in the gap.

In this conversation, Tarkan shares what it looks like to be inside that gap right now. The Sufism framework that helps him make sense of why everything was taken away. The 5am Club audiobook that cracked something open in Bali. The 12,000 hours of self-development that have compounded into something he is still learning how to bring into the world. And the honest admission that he does not know what comes next.

Beate brings her own rawness to this one. Two people in the exact same spot, on different parts of the world, mapping the terrain of an unfinished transformation together.

About Tarkan Salar.

Tarkan Salar, is a consumer brand strategist, inventor, and operator with 26+ years building and scaling global fashion and consumer goods brands.

Connect with Tarkan Salar

Website| LinkedIn |Instagram

_____________________
We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you.

Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared.

Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com)

Follow us on Instagram:
Check us out on Tik Tok:
Work With Us

Had an AHA or Insight? Share it:

Hatch Beauty Founder Tracy Holland on the hidden cost of building at all costs.

Tracy Holland built Hatch Beauty into a $100 million beauty empire in five and a half years. Self-funded.

Three kids under five. EY Entrepreneur of the Year. A manufacturing facility in Durham, North Carolina.

Business with some of the biggest retailers in the world. Every metric of success you could point to and say, she made it. And then she could not keep up with her own success.

One morning at 7:15, after another three-hour sleep night, with 14 minutes and 30 seconds calculated to get coffee, use the bathroom and make it to her 7:15 AM appointment, she pulled over on Pico Boulevard and thought three steps into traffic would fix everything.That is where this conversation starts.

We talk about secret keeping. About what it does to you when the outside image and the inside reality stop matching. When everyone around you sees the success, the beautiful children, the thriving business,

the awards and you cannot find a single person you trust enough to tell the truth to. About perfectionism and the refusal to give yourself any grace. About the identity that gets built around being the one who has it together, who never breaks, who figures it out. And how that identity becomes its own kind of prison.

We talk about the cost of the hustle and growth-at-all-cost culture. The real version. The marriage held together with one hand while building a company with the other. And what happens when your life gets
tired of waiting and screams back at you.

Tracy shares the turning point. The daily practices that recalibrated her thinking. How she rebuilt a $27 million business in 24 months after walking away from everything. And the question that changed everything for her. Listen to the episode and find out.

I know Tracy personally. I watched her. She always looked amazing on the outside. Truly an inspiring woman and founder. After this conversation I love her even more because of her raw honesty and willingness to share the hard things from her journey.

This is one of the most honest conversations I have had on this show. If you have ever built something and wondered what it is costing you, this episode is for you.

About Tracy Holland

I’m a founder, investor, and operator who has spent more than two decades building brands and businesses with women who lead. I co-founded HATCHBEAUTY and helped scale it to over $750M in cumulative wholesale revenue, launching and growing brands like Naturewell, Nuance by Salma Hayek, BLISS Color, FOUND Active, and Orlando Pita Haircare.

The pod discusses alignment of spirituality and strategy.:
My work sits at the intersection of mindset, intuition, and strategic execution. I believe true business growth happens when you align who you are with how you lead, combining inner clarity with smart, scalable strategy.
I help women step into their power by strengthening both their mindset and their business strategy. That means building confidence, trusting their instincts, and pairing that with proven frameworks to grow, scale, and lead. It’s not either/or, it’s both.

LINKS & RESOURCES

Instagram| LinkedIn | Facebook |Website

_____________________
We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you.

Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared.

Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com)

Follow us on Instagram:
Check us out on Tik Tok:
Work With Us