BONFINI PLAYBOOK

Hello! Welcome back to the Bonfini Playbook Podcast, where we help you move through life’s big transitions with stories, tools, and wisdom.

I spent 20 years in fashion, and my closet proves it. Bags I never carry, shoes I never wear, boxes I don’t open. So for this episode, I brought one of those pieces to someone who’s seen more closets than anyone I know.

Grace Brooke has spent 26 years as a professional organizer inside other people’s homes. She’s the founder of Sacred Simplicity, where she helps people let go of what they’ve been carrying in their closets and in their heads so they can live with more freedom and a lot more peace.

I talk a lot about untangling who you are from what you do. Grace helps people untangle who they are from what they own. Turns out it’s the same work.

Two Kinds of Masks

Grace grew up in a cluttered home. Her mom was a high school teacher running on survival mode, and the house held it all. Grace had headaches nobody could explain. They went away when she moved out.

Then she swung all the way to the other side. Her dad said you could eat off her floors.

“All I did was throw a mask over it, a different mask, and cover that anxiety up with perfection.”

I grew up in a spotless home too, and I still carry some of that in how I dress and show up. The difference is knowing why you do it. When you understand it, you get to choose it. When you don’t, it runs you.

The Closet Door Nobody Opens

A house can look perfect on the surface. Then someone says, “Don’t open that cabinet,” and “Definitely don’t look in the garage.”

Grace named it plainly: shame. And she was just as clear about what happens next.

“Once you shed light on it, it goes away.”

Underneath it all is scarcity. Not enough time, not enough money, and way too much stuff, kept just in case. Grace sees all three as the same story.

Your Brain on Clutter

This part stuck with me. Too much visual noise shuts down the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that handles decisions, focus, and emotional regulation. So clutter makes it harder to decide, and indecision creates more clutter. A loop, until something breaks it.

Where to Start

Grace’s first tip is one she only started giving recently: get grounded before you touch anything. Take a ten-minute walk, or a few minutes of quiet. Don’t come home from a full workday and attack the pile with your cortisol through the roof.

Then start small. One drawer, one surface, something easy enough that you can feel the win.

And pay attention to the pause. When you love something, you say so right away.

“When I see somebody hesitate, that hesitation tells me a lot.”

The Muse Bag

Then I put Grace to work. I brought my Saint Laurent Muse bag from around 2007, one of my first designer bags, from my first big job in New York. I’m keeping it. But it stands in for a whole closet of things I never pull out and can’t seem to let go of.

Grace explained why. Once we own something, our brains treat it as part of us.

“It’s like throwing a piece of us away.”

For me, those pieces belong to the version of myself who came of age at Valentino and Saint Laurent, when my title was my introduction. Of course I’m attached. The question is whether I’m keeping something because it means something, or because I think I have to.

Hard Doesn’t Mean Wrong

My favorite line from the whole conversation:

“Just because it may feel hard or icky or uncomfortable, it doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong.”

Your brain is built to keep you safe, so anything unfamiliar sets off the alarm. Knowing that lets you decide anyway.

Rapid Fire: The Carry-On Edit

Grace is more of a traveler than a shopper, so we packed light.

Book bestsellers: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker and You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero. Her favorite line: the way you do anything is the way you do everything.

Last trip that filled her cup: Greece, her second time. You can’t take a bad photo there, and Athens is thousands of years old.

Next on the list: the whole month of May 2027 in Bali, working, playing, and practicing turning her brain off and back on again.

Final Thoughts

We hold on to bags. We hold on to titles. We hold on to old versions of ourselves because letting go feels like losing something. Grace’s work reminds us that the stuff isn’t the problem. It’s information. When you understand what you’re holding on to, and why, you can build a home, and a life, for who you are now and who you’re becoming.

Find Grace:

Website Instagram

Listen to the full episode here, and send it to a friend with a closet full of past lives.

Leave a comment below, we would love to hear from you and connect!

Until next week,

Jackie

Hi, I’m Jacqueline.

Ex-luxury fashion exec turned certified coach. I work with burnt-out leaders in creative industries who are ready to escape the doom loop and reclaim their time, voice, and confidence.

If you’re ready to stop that loop, book a call.

Thanks for being part of this community. If this piece resonated, share THE BONFINI PLAYBOOK with someone who needs it.

For deeper playbooks and tools, upgrade to paid here.

Hello! Welcome back to the Bonfini Playbook Podcast, where we help you navigate life’s big transitions with stories, tools, and wisdom.

Today is our first-ever guest episode, and I couldn’t have picked a better woman to start with.

Tamar Koifman is a marketing and communications strategist with more than 20 years in beauty, luxury, and prestige lifestyle brands — L’Oréal, Wella Company, Estée Lauder, Coty, and CHANEL. An American who has called Switzerland home for 16 years, she’s the bridge when European brands need US expertise and vice versa. Today she works as an independent consultant and fractional leader under Tempo TK helping brands enter new markets and rethink their communications.

Tamar and I go way back to our New York beauty days, and this conversation is about what happens to your identity when you go from chasing the title to building a full life.

Embracing Change in Our 40sWe talk about that shift from our 20s — when we wanted to get the job, get the career, be cool — to our 40s, where things start to soften and shift. Tamar’s journey is a testament to how identity evolves, especially for women in creative industries entering a second chapter.

The Start of a CareerTamar’s first forays into fashion were anything but glamorous. “I was hauling garment bags in high heels across wintery streets,” she recalled. Those internships led her to L’Oréal, where she was surrounded by talented women leaders she admired.

“What drove me at that time was professional ambition and trying to be someone else,” Tamar explained.

It’s what so many of us did — find proximity, find the room, fly close to the sun to get there.

The Logo on Your Business CardAs we talked about success, Tamar named what so many fashion girls feel:

“I was driven by the logo on my business card.”

“Looking back, I wish I had focused more on the types of projects I was doing rather than just the label of my title.”

That difference — between the title and the actual work, between the label and being present for the responsibility — is where identity gets tangled.

Is Ambition Gone? No, It’s Redistributed.Motherhood, moving to Switzerland, building a consultancy — Tamar is clear there was no one big revelation. Ambition didn’t disappear, it just became a smaller piece of a bigger, more well-rounded life. Family, health, friendships, and a supportive partner now carry confidence too.

Confidence Comes After

“I’ve always put off a very confident energy. It doesn’t mean I am naturally confident, but I’ve been good about playing the part and waiting for the actual confidence to catch up.”

Do the thing first. Confidence lands second.

Rapid Fire — The Best-Sellers EditBorrowed from fashion: never desert your best sellers.

* Book bestseller: Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping by Paco Underhill — the book that showed her the psychology behind consumer behavior.

* Closet bestseller: The button-down — her uniform. Easy, put-together, comfortable. Current favorite: J.Crew Outlet.

* Beauty bestsellers: Hyaluronic acid serum for glow, Jones Road Miracle Balm, and Ilia for lips and liner.

* Ritual bestsellers: Preparation — writing down the hard meeting before it happens — and an early morning workout. Plus one comeback she re-picked up after years away: salsa and bachata dancing.

Final ThoughtsTamar’s story is a reminder that we don’t have a confidence problem, we have an identity problem. The title isn’t the work. The projects are the story. And reinvention isn’t about losing what you built, it’s about untangling who you are from what you do so self-trust has somewhere to land again.

Find Tamar:

Tempo TK Website LinkedIn

Listen to the full episode here, and send it to a friend in her own second chapter.

Leave a comment below, we would love to hear from you and connect!

Hi, I’m Jacqueline.

Ex-luxury fashion exec turned certified coach. I work with burnt-out leaders in creative industries who are ready to escape the doom loop and reclaim their time, voice, and confidence.

If you’re ready to stop that loop, book a call

Thanks for being part of this community. If this piece resonated, share THE BONFINI PLAYBOOK with someone who needs it.

For deeper playbooks and tools, upgrade to paid here.

Last week I broke down WTF coaching actually is. This week, I’m lifting the curtain on what it’s really like to work with me.

In this episode:

* The Discovery Call: 30 min, free, vibe fit. No hard sell, no spam.

* Session 1: Your ELI — Energy Leadership Index. Not personality, but where you’re spending your energy across 7 levels. This becomes our baseline and shared language.

* Sessions 2-11: The Real Work — You bring the topic, we set ONE goal for that hour (not 3 years), we unpack the story and limiting belief, reframe, and close with accountability.

* Tools I love: Mirroring (hearing your words back is powerful) and Parts Work (that frustration is a PART of you, not all of you).

* The Boundary: Coaching vs. therapy, and why as an ICF-trained coach I take that line seriously.

* Who it’s for: My clients are usually fashion/retail/creative and don’t want to over-explain. Most fit into 1 of 3: The Modern Parent, The Architect of What’s Next, or The Unfulfilled Achiever.

* Why now: September is the new January. Back-to-school energy. Back to YOU season.

LINKS:

Instagram Reel

What is the Energy Leadership Index (ELI)?

Book a Discovery Call

Learn more on my website

Episode Title: The Inner Critic Borrowed Your Brain. Here's How to Take It Back.

Episode Description:

The inner critic doesn't announce itself as fear. It shows up as preparation. As research. As "I just need a little more information before I move forward."

In this episode, Jackie breaks down what the inner critic actually is, where it came from, and why the smartest, most capable people are often the ones who struggle with it most. Plus the four-step framework she uses in sessions to stop fighting it and start redirecting it.

What you'll hear in this episode:

Why your inner critic isn't broken and isn't the enemy, and what it was actually built to do.

Why the sharpest minds often have the sharpest inner critics.

What the spiral really looks like when that voice gets too loud for too long.

The four-step framework: separate it, get curious about it, thank it, give it another job.

The real question worth sitting with about what it's actually costing you.

About The Bonfini Playbook:

Jackie Bonfini is an iPEC-certified executive coach and founder of Bonfini Coaching. After 20+ years as a luxury fashion and retail executive, she now helps individuals find the permission and clarity to trust themselves, make bold moves, and stop waiting for someone else to greenlight their life. New episodes every Thursday.

I’m back in your ears after a week of ice storms, sick kids, and enough laundry to fill a showroom. But amidst the chaos, I finished my final in-person module for my coaching certification. Today, I’m sharing why I finally decided to "pull the trigger" on building this business, why I’ve stopped judging myself for being "cheesy," and how I’m navigating the impossible tension of being a parent and a present human while the world feels like it's on fire.

In this episode:

Why do we add pressure when life gets complicated?

How my own judgment of what was "outside the norm" kept me small for years.

My personal struggle with staying informed vs. staying paralyzed by global suffering.

A shift in perspective—treating anger, anxiety, and sadness as signals to be heard rather than problems to be fixed.

Getting curious about your "heavy" emotions this week.

"If I am consumed by the scroll, I am paralyzed. If I am paralyzed, I am of no use to anyone. We can’t solve the world’s problems with the same energy that created them."

Back by popular demand! Since you loved the “voice note” format last week, I’m popping back into your ears with a reflection on a week that has felt particularly heavy and nostalgic. From the passing of Mr. Valentino (my first Job in fashion) to the headlines about the Saks Global bankruptcy, the fashion community is feeling it right now. This episode is for anyone whose identity is tightly wrapped in their work and is looking for a way to stand steady when the industry shifts.

In this episode, we discuss:

* The Valentino Legacy: What I learned as a young account executive working for a legend, and the discipline of luxury.

* The Identity Trap: Why we personify the brands we work for, from the clothes we wear to the way we speak, and the danger of that connection during a shake-up.

* “Is This Mine?”: A simple, three-word tool for intentionally checking in with yourself in times of anxiety. Are you feeling your stress, or are you just absorbing the room’s panic?

* The Hidden Brain Connection: Why rushing to solve problems that aren’t ours to carry is the ultimate thief of patience. Link to the Podcast I referenced here, it’s a good one!

* Ownership: Reminding yourself that your incredible skill set, resilience, and creativity belong to you, not the brand you work for.

“If you’re busy carrying the company’s panic, you don’t have any hands free to build your own future.”

I’m doing something a little different this week. Instead of a written article, I wanted to sit down and talk to you, friend to friend. Think of this as a 10-minute "long-form voice note." I’m sharing what’s been on my heart after a very intentional holiday break and a big 5th birthday milestone for my daughter.

In this episode, we talk about:

The "Mommy" Comparison Trap: Why I finally realized that comparing my "messy middle" to a highlight reel was stealing my joy.

The Postpartum Reality: A vulnerable look at why it took three years after my second child to finally feel my nervous system come back online.

2016 vs. 2026: How getting my dog, Frankie, a decade ago sparked the vision for the life I’m living today.

The Millennial Mission: Moving away from the "hustle" and shifting our generation's outlook from grit to graceful.

The Power of the Pause: Why slowing down is the ultimate requirement for hearing your own inner voice.

The Closing Thought:

"We used to dance on tables in five-inch stilettos and go out in the freezing cold with no jackets. We have the grit. Now, it’s about finding the grace."