Bee Formless™ Flow Driven CEO

In this episode of the Bee Formless™ Flow Driven CEO Podcast, I connected with Daniel Murray, Founder of Empathic Consulting and author of The Empathy Gap, to challenge something businesses do every day: reduce people to numbers and then wonder why performance varies.

Daniel’s inflection point came while looking at a resource plan filled with names and FTE allocations. One person was listed as a “1” for five days a week, yet Daniel knew some days he showed up closer to a 0.2 and others more like a 1.3. The spreadsheet ignored that variability because, as the project manager told him, “it doesn’t fit in the spreadsheet.”

That question changed Daniel’s work. What determines how someone shows up, and what role does their environment play? He compared it to growing tomatoes: yelling at them doesn’t make them grow better. You look at the soil, water and sunlight. People are not so different.

We delved into why “busy kills empathy”, how quickly assumptions replace curiosity under pressure, and becoming consciously curious: noticing the story we have created about someone, parking it and making the effort to understand what is actually happening in their world.

Daniel believes information is becoming abundant and cheap, while trusted relationships are becoming more valuable. We talked about AI reinforcing our assumptions, creating personal echo chambers and increasing the empathy gap if we stop questioning what comes back to us.

I agree with Daniel's view, that our job as leaders is to help people be happy and successful. Sometimes that means listening, creating options and giving difficult feedback, yet the conversation changes when it begins with: “I care about you.”

THE SHAPE SHIFT IN MOTION

At the heart of this conversation was a shift from managing through assumptions to understanding the human conditions that shape performance.

LEARN (LETTING GO)

✨ People are not fixed resources on a spreadsheet.

✨ Assumptions may be efficient, but they are not always accurate.

✨ A strong strategy can still fail if we ignore how people feel along the way.

UNLEARN (CREATE, REIMAGINE & RESHAPE)

✨ Replace assumption with conscious curiosity.

✨ Look beyond individual performance to the environment surrounding it.

✨ Treat empathy as a capability that can be practised, not simply a personality trait.

RELEARN (TEST & IMPLEMENT)

✨ Protect time for real one-on-one conversations.

✨ Ask what people are worried about before problems become resistance.

✨ Build trust deliberately as information becomes easier to access and harder to verify.

ACTIVE RECOVERY (REFLECT & RESET)

✨ What assumptions are you currently making about someone on your team?

✨ Where has being busy stopped you from being curious?

✨ Do your people know that you genuinely care about their success?

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-empathicconsulting/

🌐 https://www.empathicconsulting.com

💭 What could change if we became curious about behaviour before judging it?

Book a Strategic Shape Shift Diagnostic to illuminate what needs to shift across leadership, business and brand, from the inside out.

🔗 https://calendly.com/beeformless/strategicshapeshiftdiagnostic

#beeformless #flowdrivenceo #danielmurray #empathygap #empathy #trust #curiosity #humanbehaviour #performance #growth #insideouttransformation

In this episode of the Bee Formless™ Flow Driven CEO Podcast, I connected with Dr. Lisa Greene, optometrist and Founder of Asheville Vision & Wellness, for an insightful conversation about our eyes, our screen-filled lives and why caring for our vision is very much an inside job.

This one was personal as I have lived with Keratoconus and had a corneal transplant, so I related to Lisa’s belief that what we do today is like putting into a savings account for our future health. As she said, “Next to heartbeat and breath, vision is the last thing anybody wants to give up.”

I was fascinated by our conversation around screen time. Lisa explained why myopia is rising in children, why our visual systems weren’t designed to focus up close all day, and how that strain can show up as neck tension, jaw clenching, migraines, light sensitivity, motion sickness and dry eye. Our eyes need us to step away, look into the distance and get outside.

I loved hearing about a bright young girl who, despite reading support, couldn’t read fluently. Lisa identified how her eyes were working together and demonstrated specialised prism lenses. Her mother heard her daughter reading dramatically faster and cried, “I have never heard my daughter read like that.” By the end of fourth grade she had caught up; by the end of fifth, she was ahead.

We also discussed nutrition, movement, preventative screening and AI in earlier detection, before the inside job moved into business: Lisa’s own evolution from carrying so much herself to developing a team she trusts to flourish without her making every decision. A belief that even if someone eventually leaves, Lisa wants their time to have given them something they carry into whatever comes next.

THE SHAPE SHIFT IN MOTION

Lisa’s work asks us to rethink care from fixing what has already gone wrong to creating the conditions for health to last.

LEARN (LETTING GO)

✨ Eye health is connected to the health of the whole person.

✨ Our visual systems need recovery from sustained close-up screen work.

✨ Waiting for symptoms can mean missing opportunities for earlier intervention.

UNLEARN (CREATE, REIMAGINE & RESHAPE)

✨ Shift from reactive care towards prevention and education.

✨ Question whether “good enough” is still the healthiest option available.

✨ Treat rest and stepping away from screens as part of caring for our vision.

RELEARN (TEST & IMPLEMENT)

✨ Take regular visual breaks and spend time looking into the distance.

✨ Support eye health through movement and whole, colourful foods.

✨ Create environments where people feel cared for, not processed.

ACTIVE RECOVERY (REFLECT & RESET)

✨ When did you last give your eyes a genuine break?

✨ What is your body asking you to notice before it becomes a bigger problem?

✨ What could you do today that your future health will thank you for?

🔗 linkedin.com/in/lisa-greene-od-4882628

🌐 https://ashevillevisionandwellness.com/

💭 Are we waiting until something goes wrong to care for the health we have?

Book a Strategic Shape Shift Diagnostic to illuminate what needs to shift across leadership, business and brand, from the inside out.

🔗 https://calendly.com/beeformless/strategicshapeshiftdiagnostic

#beeformless #flowdrivenceo #ashevillevision #eyehealth #screentime #preventativehealth #wellness #founders #passion

In this episode of the Bee Formless™ Flow Driven CEO Podcast, I connected with Chris Christofi, Founder and CEO of Reventon, entrepreneur, property investor, philanthropist and host of RELENTLESS: Life On Your Terms, for a conversation about adversity, ambition and the person we become through both.

Chris became a multimillionaire in his early twenties, then lost everything at 24. Carrying $348,000 in debt and back living with his parents, bankruptcy was an option, but Chris saw debt as a promise to repay and wanted to show his son that quitting wasn’t. More than two decades later, the business he began from his parents’ home has become something much bigger.

What interested me was Chris’s willingness to talk about the cost as well as the success. He describes himself as relentless, yet doesn’t believe more hours should automatically be the goal. His distinction between work-life balance and “work-life choices” raised a much more interesting question: what are we consciously choosing to give our energy to, and why?

We explored how Chris leads through empathy and intuition, his commitment to getting 1% better every day, and why uncomfortable feedback is often where he finds the greatest opportunity to evolve. At 46, he expects the version of himself at 50 to be better again.

Spiritual growth is part of that evolution too. Chris shared how returning to church during one of his hardest periods gave him somewhere to ask for patience, initially one week at a time, and how that inner work began flowing into the way he showed up as a father, CEO and human being.

Underneath the awards, property, business growth and philanthropy was a philosophy I loved: “earn more to give more.” For Chris, success and contribution are not separate, and neither are adversity and growth.

THE SHAPE SHIFT IN MOTION

This conversation was a reminder that growth is not about avoiding adversity. It is about what we choose to build from it.

LEARN (LETTING GO)

✨ Working harder is not the same as working more effectively.

✨ Everything we build comes with choices about where our energy goes.

✨ Adversity can reveal a version of us we have not met yet.

UNLEARN (CREATE, REIMAGINE & RESHAPE)

✨ Replace work-life balance with conscious work-life choices.

✨ Seek the uncomfortable feedback rather than avoiding it.

✨ Let success become a vehicle for contribution, not simply accumulation.

RELEARN (TEST & IMPLEMENT)

✨ Look for the 1% improvement available today.

✨ Understand when and how your people perform at their best.

✨ Keep evolving the person behind the business.

ACTIVE RECOVERY (REFLECT & RESET)

✨ Where are you being asked to become uncomfortable?

✨ What deserves more of your energy right now?

✨ What could the next version of you do differently?

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-christofi/

🌐 https://chrischristofi.com.au

🏢 https://www.reventon.com.au

💭 What has adversity taught you that success never could?

Book a Strategic Shape Shift Diagnostic to illuminate what needs to shift across leadership, business and brand, from the inside out.

🔗 https://calendly.com/beeformless/strategicshapeshiftdiagnostic

#beeformless #flowdrivenceo #reventon #entrepreneurship #adversity #businessgrowth #philanthropy #personal

In this episode of the Bee Formless™ Flow Driven CEO Podcast, I connected with Ramon Estrada, Founder CEO Coach and creator of High-Frequency Founder, and there was an immediate alignment around something I care deeply about: how do we scale what we are building without losing ourselves in the process?

Ramon describes founders as the soul of the business. We begin with an original thought, an idea we want to bring into the world, then the pressure of product, clients, cash flow, team, growth and everything else starts taking over. Somewhere in that shift, it becomes very easy to lose connection with the person who started it all.

Ramon knows that tension personally. For years, his spiritual life and his drive to achieve existed almost as two separate worlds. His work today brings them together, helping founders understand that scaling is not simply a business problem. It is also about energy, self-awareness, consciousness and the person we are becoming as the business grows.

One part of our conversation felt especially relevant right now: knowledge is not wisdom. AI can give us answers almost instantly, but it cannot decide who we need to become, what we are avoiding, where we are reacting from fear or what the next version of the business is asking from us.

We also explored the business as a mirror, why founders so easily become their own bottleneck, our relationship with money, masculine and feminine energies in business, and why entrepreneurship doesn’t need to mean endless hustle. I loved how Ramon put it: stepping outside our comfort zone can be painful, “but the suffering is optional.”

THE SHAPE SHIFT IN MOTION

At the heart of this conversation was a shift from scaling through force and survival to recognising that the business can only evolve as far as the founder is willing to evolve.

LEARN (LETTING GO)

✨ More knowledge does not automatically create more wisdom.

✨ Hustle and suffering are not prerequisites for meaningful growth.

✨ The external problem is not always where the work needs to begin.

UNLEARN (CREATE, REIMAGINE & RESHAPE)

✨ Move from victim and reaction into agency and creation.

✨ Reconnect business growth with the original thought that made you begin.

✨ Integrate mind, body, energy and soul rather than separating the founder from the business.

RELEARN (TEST & IMPLEMENT)

✨ Notice where you are becoming the bottleneck.

✨ Understand what gives you energy, what drains it and what needs to be delegated.

✨ Build the capacity of the founder alongside the capacity of the company.

ACTIVE RECOVERY (REFLECT & RESET)

✨ Who do you need to become for the next version of your business?

✨ Is your business reflecting alignment or survival?

✨ Are you scaling something that still feels connected to you?

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramonestradat/

🌐 https://www.ramonestradat.com

💭 What changes when we stop asking only how to scale the business and start asking who we need to become as it grows?

Book a Strategic Shape Shift Diagnostic to illuminate what needs to shift across leadership, business and brand, from the inside out.

🔗 https://calendly.com/beeformless/strategicshapeshiftdiagnostic

#beeformless #flowdrivenceo #ramonestrada #highfrequencyfounder #businessgrowth #selfmastery #energy #soul #insideouttransformation #lifeleadershipbusiness #antifragile #spirituality #founder

In this episode of the Bee Formless™ Flow Driven CEO Podcast, I connected with Caspar Schmidt, Founder and Managing Director of QCC Collection Group, and our conversation had me thinking about what we are really looking for when we travel. Is it simply somewhere beautiful to stay, or somewhere that makes us feel, connect and experience something we will actually remember?

After more than 20 years in corporate hospitality, Caspar stepped away around 40 to escape the constraints of standard operating procedures and build QCC around what he calls “authentic transformation.”

What interested me was the commercial thinking underneath it. Caspar believes “purpose creates profit”, not by ignoring the numbers, but by understanding what makes people return. A hotel can give someone a room and complete a transaction, or it can create belonging and become part of that person’s story.

We explored how this is reshaping hospitality, from the growth of boutique hotels to wellness becoming a lifestyle rather than an added amenity. Guests are increasingly seeking nature, recovery, sleep optimisation, thoughtful design and the personal interactions that technology cannot replicate.

I also related to Caspar’s decision to consciously reduce his client base after years of building at full speed. Fewer clients gave him greater depth, better outcomes and more space for his family, opening up a much bigger question: does success always require more, or can we reshape the business around the life we actually want to live?

Underneath the hotels, design and commercial performance was Caspar’s belief that “if you’re in hospitality, then you are in human transformation.”

THE SHAPE SHIFT IN MOTION

At the heart of this conversation was a shift from hospitality as transaction to hospitality as transformation; creating places, businesses and experiences with enough purpose and humanity to stay with people long after they leave.

LEARN (LETTING GO)

✨ Profit does not have to come before purpose.

✨ Bigger and faster do not always create greater value.

✨ Leadership is no longer about one person sitting at the top of the pyramid.

UNLEARN (CREATE, REIMAGINE & RESHAPE)

✨ Reimagine hotels as places that become part of people’s stories.

✨ Create experiences around belonging, connection and memory, not simply service.

✨ Design businesses around depth and intention rather than endless volume.

RELEARN (TEST & IMPLEMENT)

✨ Prioritise EQ, adaptability and human connection alongside technical capability.

✨ Let teams lead at every level.

✨ Build around the future you want to live, not simply the business you think you should run.

ACTIVE RECOVERY (REFLECT & RESET)

✨ What would change if purpose came before profit?

✨ Are you creating something people will remember or simply consume?

✨ Is the business you are building aligned with the life you want to live?

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/casparschmidt/

🌐 https://www.qcccollection.com

💭 What are you creating that could become part of someone else’s story?

Book a Strategic Shape Shift Diagnostic to illuminate what needs to shift across leadership, business and brand, from the inside out.

🔗 https://calendly.com/beeformless/strategicshapeshiftdiagnostic

#beeformless #flowdrivenceo #qcccollection #boutiquehotels #purpose #experience #insideouttransformation

In this episode of the Bee Formless™ Flow Driven CEO Podcast, I connected with Shelly McElroy, Founder and CEO of Dream Culture, and her energy made this such a fun conversation about something that shapes almost every part of our working lives: culture.

Shelly spent much of her career in hospitality, including five and a half years at Merivale as it grew from around 1,000 people to more than 3,000. It gave her a front-row seat to what happens when businesses scale and teams begin developing cultures of their own. I loved the way she distilled it: every organisation has a choice between creating a “culture by design” or ending up with a “culture by default.”

We went into what happens when you take the values off the wall and look at how people actually behave. Who speaks in meetings and who never does? When was the last time someone received meaningful feedback? Are we rewarding performance or simply longevity? And one of my favourites from Shelly: “Does the room get brighter when you walk in or when you walk out?”

There was also an interesting tension around technology and the future of work. We can automate more, move faster and become increasingly efficient, but are we actually performing better? Shelly believes the human skills underneath great workplaces are becoming even more important: eye contact, honest feedback, curiosity, knowing what motivates people and creating space for different generations to learn from one another.

Shelly also spoke openly about her own experience of being bullied at work and how that helped fuel her desire to build a business, Dream Culture and her belief that culture cannot be a second thought. As she put it, “What you walk past is what you accept.”

THE SHAPE SHIFT IN MOTION

At the heart of this conversation was a shift from treating culture as something we say to recognising it as something we practise through behaviour, conversation and shared responsibility.

LEARN (LETTING GO)

✨ Values on a wall do not create culture.

✨ Loyalty and longevity do not replace growth, feedback or performance.

✨ Efficiency does not automatically mean we are performing better.

UNLEARN (CREATE, REIMAGINE & RESHAPE)

✨ Create culture by design rather than accepting culture by default.

✨ Bring experienced and emerging leaders together to learn from one another.

✨ Replace assumptions with conversations about how we want to work together.

RELEARN (TEST & IMPLEMENT)

✨ Turn values into behaviours people can see and be accountable for.

✨ Make feedback part of everyday culture, not an occasional performance review.

✨ Remember that what we walk past is what we teach others we will accept.

ACTIVE RECOVERY (REFLECT & RESET)

✨ Does the room get brighter when you walk in or when you walk out?

✨ What are you accepting because nobody has challenged it?

✨ As technology accelerates, what human connections do we need to protect?

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/shellymcelroy/

🌐 http://dreamculture.com.au

💭 Are you creating your culture by design, or allowing it to form by default?

Book a Strategic Shape Shift Diagnostic to illuminate what needs to shift across leadership, business and brand, from the inside out.

🔗 https://calendly.com/beeformless/strategicshapeshiftdiagnostic

#beeformless #flowdrivenceo #dreamculture #futureofwork #values #humanconnection #insideouttransformation

In this episode of the Bee Formless™ Flow Driven CEO Podcast, I connected with Ryan Fowler, CEO and Co-Founder of Rio’s Legacy, for a deeply personal conversation about his son Rio, paediatric palliative care and the unexpected path that led him from education into leading a charity.

When Rio was just 18 months old, what began with gastro became something Ryan and his wife Karen could never have imagined. They took their little boy to hospital and he never came home. Eventually their family found Bear Cottage, where Ryan’s understanding of palliative care changed completely. He had initially resisted going because it felt like giving up on his son, until he heard something: “Children come here to live, not to die.”

I loved hearing Ryan talk about the seemingly little things Bear Cottage gave their family: someone offering to make a cup of tea, home-cooked meals, their four-year-old daughter Remy being able to play, a therapy dog sitting with Rio and the chance to spend Christmas together.

After losing Rio in January 2018, Ryan and Karen started asking why so few families across Australia had access to this kind of care. That question became Rio’s Legacy and has taken Ryan somewhere he never expected to go. As he told me, “I didn’t sign up to be a CEO.” Today, he works across government, healthcare, business and community to advocate for greater access to paediatric palliative care, including Mounties Care Cottage in Western Sydney.

We kept coming back to Ryan’s belief that every child is “fearfully and wonderfully made”, however long or short their time in this world.

THE SHAPE SHIFT IN MOTION

At the heart of this conversation was a shift in how we understand paediatric palliative care: from something Ryan initially saw as giving up, to a place where children can live and families can be families.

LEARN (LETTING GO)
✨ Palliative care does not mean giving up on a child.
✨ A hospital is not always the only place a child can receive care.
✨ Supporting a child also means holding the family around them.

UNLEARN (CREATE, REIMAGINE & RESHAPE)
✨ Reimagine palliative care around living, dignity and time together.
✨ Reshape a system where access should not depend on where a family lives.
✨ Recognise how much small acts of humanity can matter.

RELEARN (TEST & IMPLEMENT)
✨ Give families clearer choices and conversations around palliative care.
✨ Let lived experience expose what our systems are missing.
✨ Understand that leadership can find us through what we never planned to experience.

ACTIVE RECOVERY (REFLECT & RESET)
✨ What does caring look like when curing is no longer possible?
✨ What if we saw children’s hospices as places to live, rather than places to die?
✨ What can love continue to shape long after a life has ended?

🌐 https://rioslegacy.org.au
🎟️ A Night in Rio: https://www.mountiesgroup.com.au/a-night-in-rio

💭 What could change if every Australian family facing the unimaginable had somewhere they could simply be a family?

Book a Strategic Shape Shift Diagnostic to illuminate what needs to shift across leadership, business and brand, from the inside out.
🔗 https://calendly.com/beeformless/strategicshapeshiftdiagnostic

#beeformless #flowdrivenceo #rioslegacy #paediatricpalliativecare #bearcottage #leadership #humanity #socialimpact #love

In this episode of the Bee Formless™ Flow Driven CEO Podcast, I connected with Norah Copithorne, Founder of Nature’s Defence, and from the beginning I knew this conversation was going to go somewhere a little different.

For the first 50 years of her life, Norah was known as Lynn. On her 50th birthday, she decided to shake things up and spend the next 50 as Norah, and I loved hearing her say, “I love the Norah of now.” Getting there has taken her through corporate life, debilitating migraines, some deeply challenging periods and a gradual process of understanding how much of her life had been led by her mind.

One of my favourite stories was Norah walking through Sydney holding her own internal board meetings, trying to understand the relationship between her mind, heart, body and soul. Eventually they reached an agreement: her heart would lead and her mind would become the COO. She laughed that she initially forgot to invite her body altogether, which said so much about how she had been living.

We got into the breadcrumbs that started appearing as Norah stopped forcing and began paying attention to what felt right, including the unexpected trail that eventually led her to Nature’s Defence. As she said, “Each of us has our own breadcrumb path. The trick is recognising it.”

I related to the tension Norah described between trusting what is unfolding and the part of us that still wants to control, push and know exactly where everything is going. She spoke about learning to let people lean in rather than forcing herself to be heard, and how difficult it can be to know whether we are doing enough when we have spent so much of our lives believing more effort must be the answer.

THE SHAPE SHIFT IN MOTION

At the heart of this conversation was a shift from trying to think our way into certainty to becoming quiet enough to recognise what already feels true.

LEARN (LETTING GO)

✨ The belief that the mind always needs to be in charge.

✨ The instinct to push harder when something is not unfolding quickly enough.

✨ The expectation that transformation should happen on our preferred timeline.

UNLEARN (CREATE, REIMAGINE & RESHAPE)

✨ Let the heart lead while allowing the mind to support rather than control.

✨ Notice the people, ideas and experiences that repeatedly pull at your attention.

✨ Reimagine trust as something we practise rather than something we wait to feel.

RELEARN (TEST & IMPLEMENT)

✨ Listen to the body before it has to shout.

✨ Build relationships and businesses around kindness, consciousness and choice.

✨ Create enough space for people and opportunities to lean in.

ACTIVE RECOVERY (REFLECT & RESET)

✨ Where is your mind trying to control something your heart already understands?

✨ What breadcrumb keeps appearing that you may be dismissing?

✨ What would change if you trusted the next step without needing the whole path?

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/norah-copithorne-00096111
🌐 https://www.naturesdefence.co

💭 What breadcrumb has been asking for your attention?

Book a Strategic Shape Shift Diagnostic to illuminate what needs to shift in your leadership, business and brand, from the inside out.
🔗 https://calendly.com/beeformless/strategicshapeshiftdiagnostic

#beeformless #flowdrivenceo #naturesdefence #trustthebreadcrumbs #heartledleadership #intuition #identity #consciousbusiness

In this episode of the Bee Formless™ Flow Driven CEO Podcast, I connected with Cory Blumenfeld, Founder of BlueMoso and CSMoso, to explore a question I think more founders need to sit with: what if the hardest way is not always the right way?

Cory knows the cost of efforting. Earlier in his entrepreneurial journey, never taking a day off felt like a badge of honour until sixteen-hour days and constant pressure began showing up physically. What changed was not his ambition, instead his relationship with how he was using it.

Today, Cory has three words tattooed on himself: “Find your easy.”

As he put it, “It doesn’t mean it’s easy. When you find something that’s your easy, it’s still hard, but you’re in a state of flow.”

It also doesn’t mean the effort disappears, as Cory said, “The time you put in today equals the time you get back tomorrow.”

That idea opened up a much bigger conversation about founder dependency, ego and why so much of a business can remain trapped inside the founder’s head. We explored the difference between handing people tasks and giving them genuine ownership of an outcome, and why building something that can move without you requires letting go before you feel completely ready.

I also loved where we went around the human experience becoming the premium tier when it comes to business. As more repetitive work becomes automated, Cory believes empathy, judgment, connection and the ability to understand another person become far more valuable, not less.

Underneath all of it was another question: if we are working so hard to buy back our time, what do we actually want that time back for?

THE SHAPE SHIFT IN MOTION

At the heart of this conversation was a shift from measuring success by how much we carry to creating the freedom to choose what deserves us.

LEARN (LETTING GO)

✨ The belief that never stopping is proof of commitment.

✨ The idea that the founder needs to remain inside every decision.

✨ The habit of confusing completed tasks with meaningful outcomes.

UNLEARN (CREATE, REIMAGINE & RESHAPE)

✨ Find your easy by noticing where effort turns into natural flow.

✨ Build systems and documentation so knowledge can move beyond the founder.

✨ Reshape work around outcomes that give people greater ownership and purpose.

RELEARN (TEST & IMPLEMENT)

✨ Delegate with enough clarity that people can genuinely take responsibility.

✨ Use automation for repetitive work while protecting the human experiences that create trust and value.

✨ Treat the time you put in today as an investment in the freedom you want tomorrow.

ACTIVE RECOVERY (REFLECT & RESET)

✨ Where are you forcing something that may not be your easy?

✨ What are you still holding because your ego tells you only you can do it?

✨ If you got a thousand hours back this year, what would you want them for?

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/coryblumenfeld/
🌐 https://www.bluemoso.com

💭 What would change if you stopped trying to do everything?

Book a Strategic Shape Shift Diagnostic to illuminate what needs to change across leadership, business and brand, from the inside out.

🔗 https://calendly.com/beeformless/strategicshapeshiftdiagnostic

#beeformless #flowdrivenceo #bluemoso #CSMoso #findyoureasy #operationalfreedom #humanvalue #founderjourney

In this episode of the Bee Formless™ Flow Driven CEO Podcast, I connected with Lara Solomon, Founder and CEO of Hoopsy, the company behind the world’s first paper-based pregnancy test, for a conversation that became far more personal than the product or business behind it.

Lara and I share an experience neither of us would have chosen: going through IVF hoping to become mum's and having to make peace with life unfolding differently. We talked openly about the grief that comes with that, particularly the kind other people cannot always see, and how it can disappear for a while only to surface again when something touches the life you once imagined. As Lara said, “It doesn’t go away, it just becomes easier.”

Hoopsy began during Lara’s own IVF journey, when she kept seeing women sharing photos of the many pregnancy tests they were taking while waiting and hoping, and she became unable to ignore the plastic waste being created alongside such an emotional experience.

That observation became the world’s first paper-based pregnancy test, and Hoopsy is evolving into something much more community. Lara is building around an experience she knows intimately, bringing greater care, connection and emotional support into a fertility journey that can feel incredibly lonely.

We discussed the expectations we absorb around partnership, children and how life is supposed to unfold, and who we become when it doesn’t. Lara reflected on finding herself, and learning to stay connected to who she had become.

There was something serendipitous that “hoop” means hope in Dutch.

THE SHAPE SHIFT IN MOTION

At the heart of this conversation was a shift from carrying difficult experiences quietly to allowing lived experience to become a source of connection, innovation and care.

LEARN (LETTING GO)

✨ The expectation that life must follow the path we were taught to imagine.

✨ The belief that grief only counts when other people can see what was lost.

UNLEARN (CREATE, REIMAGINE & RESHAPE)

✨ Reimagine lived experience as insight rather than something to hide.

✨ Build around the emotional reality people are living, not only the product they are buying.

RELEARN (TEST & IMPLEMENT)

✨ Choose your own path rather than somebody else’s version of fulfilment.

✨ Build with care where existing systems have left people unsupported.

ACTIVE RECOVERY (REFLECT & RESET)

✨ What part of your story are you still trying to hide or outrun?

✨ What could your lived experience teach you about what the world still needs?

Find out more:

🔗 https://linkedin.com/in/larasolomon
🌐 https://hoopsy.com
📷 Instagram.com/hoopsyco
🎵 Tiktok.com/@hoopsyco
📘 Facebook.com/Hoopsyco

💭 What part of your own story might hold the beginning of something meaningful?

If you’re ready to reshape your life, leadership or business from the inside out, start with a Strategic Shape Shift Diagnostic.

🔗 https://calendly.com/beeformless/strategicshapeshiftdiagnostic

#beeformless #flowdrivenceo #hoopsy #fertility #ivfjourney #womenshealth #sustainableinnovation