Changeology

Send us Fan Mail

Most of the women I work with have never really failed. They've made the safe call, stayed on the established path, always landed on their feet. And at some point, that safety stopped feeling like safety and started feeling like a cage. My guest today has done the opposite her entire life — she's moved across the country with a boyfriend of one year, walked away from a stable career to follow a friend to a startup, talked her way into a kitchen in Manhattan with zero experience, and built a risk tolerance that most people would describe as unusually high. Not because she's reckless. Because she's lived through enough worst-case scenarios to know they're survivable.

Kate Crane is a career coach, founder of the coaching practice and podcast Direction Over Perfection, and someone whose own career path — art history to line cook to management consultant to DoorDash executive to startup operator to career coach — is proof that the most interesting paths are almost never linear. Her work helps young adults and people in career transition figure out what comes next, not by following a prescribed path, but by getting clear on what they actually want and taking directional steps toward it.

This conversation goes deep on something I've wanted to explore for a long time: how do you build a risk tolerance if you've spent your entire career avoiding risk? And is failure actually the problem — or is it the word itself that's doing the damage?

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How to evaluate risk as a spectrum rather than a binary — and the specific variables Kate uses to assess whether a leap is worth taking
• Why living through a worst-case scenario is often the thing that makes every future leap feel more possible
• What it means to "sunset" the word failure — and what to replace it with when something doesn't go the way you planned
• How tracking progress in small increments changes your relationship with setbacks in real time
• What alternative dimensions of success look like when you stop measuring only by revenue and résumé

The data is knowable. The worst case is survivable. And the reward is usually bigger than the risk.

Connect with Kate:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katecrane7/

Instagram: @directionoverperfection 

TikTok: @directionoverperfection

Podcast: Direction Over Perfection with Kate Crane (Spotify & Apple Podcasts)

Send us Fan Mail

One of the most common things I hear from women who are standing at the edge of a big change — leaving a job, starting a business, reevaluating their life — is some version of: I'd love to, but I can't afford it. 

And I understand why it feels true. But here's what I've come to believe after years of coaching women through major transitions: most of the time, "I can't afford it" isn't a fact. It's a story. And the fastest way to find out which one it is? Put your numbers on paper.

That's exactly what my guests today specialize in. Shana and Vanessa are the Budget Besties — two best friends who watched too many capable, hardworking women experience shame and paralysis around money and decided to do something about it. Their system helps women build budgets that actually fit their real lives: one that funds the date night and the debt payoff, the yoga certification and the savings account. They call it being bougie on a budget, and it works.

If you've ever told yourself you're bad with money, avoided opening your bank app, or quietly handed the financial reins to someone else because it feels like too much — this conversation is going to feel like a relief. Because the truth is, you were probably never taught how to do this. And you can't be ashamed of something nobody showed you how to do.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "I can't afford it" is almost always a disorganization problem, not an income problem — and how putting five simple numbers on paper changes everything
• The psychology behind why capable women avoid looking at their money, and how that avoidance keeps them stuck in every other area of their lives too
• Why spending freely on your kids but hitting a hard stop at spending on yourself isn't a budgeting issue — it's a mindset issue, and what to do about it
• How building a budget system that runs automatically becomes an identity shift — and why women start trusting themselves differently once the math is visible
• How to build a "storm mode" savings strategy when a big life change is on the horizon, so that money stops being the reason the thing doesn't happen

Stop letting money be the reason you don't make the change. The math is more solvable than you think.

Connect with Shana & Vanessa: 

Website: budgetbesties.com 

Free Money Quiz: budgetbesties.com/quiz 

Budget System: budgetbesties.com/budget 

Private Coaching: budgetbesties.com/coaching 

Podcast: Financial Coaching for Women

Send us Fan Mail

When people lose a job, a role, or a career they've spent decades building, they often describe it as losing themselves. 

And I understand why — when your identity has been organized around your work, your title, your mission, the work going away can feel like you going away. But here's what this conversation with my guest Carly Anna Walker made even clearer: Your work was never the foundation of your identity to begin with. It was just one expression of it. 

And that distinction changes everything.

Carly Anna Walker is a former behavior analyst, a master's-level psychologist, and a coach to coaches and entrepreneurs whose work sits at the intersection of behavioral reconditioning and identity change. She created the Midas Coach — a psychology-grounded coach training program — and has spent nearly a decade helping people identify and update the conditioning that quietly puts a ceiling on their growth, their income, and their freedom. 

Carly is also one of my most trusted mentors, and someone I turn to when I want to think more rigorously about how identity actually works.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What self-concept actually is, how it's formed, and why a fixed self-concept creates as many problems as it solves
• Why the feeling that your identity has been "taken away" is a misunderstanding — and what's actually true about identity that makes this moment an opportunity
• How to use your values as a decision-making framework when everything feels uncertain and unclear
• Why we wait for external permission to change — and what it takes to stop outsourcing that decision to circumstances, other people, or fate
• What agency actually means in the context of identity change, and how to start exercising it even when you're still in the thick of loss or transition

I hope you love this conversation as much as I loved having it. Carly is one of those people who makes the abstract feel actionable and the psychological feel personal. She has inspired me, and I know she'll inspire you, too.

Changeology is a podcast about the real, messy, nonlinear process of personal change — hosted by Dr. Meg Trucano, developmental psychologist and change coach.

Send us Fan Mail

Last week, a woman got on a Clarity Call with me and asked point blank: 

Can you help me? 

After listening to her describe her situation — complicated, layered, with several elements that fell well outside the coaching lane — my answer was: Yes... but not yet. Not because I couldn't help her, but because she needed a specific kind of support first, and skipping that step would have meant wasting her time, her money, and her energy on coaching that couldn't land. Referring her to other professionals was the right call. It's also what any coach worth hiring would do.

This episode is a guide to making one of the most important — and often midsunderstood — decisions you can make for yourself: whether to hire a coach, what kind of support you actually need, and how to tell the difference between a coach who will change your life and one who will quietly waste your time.

You've probably already done the DIY version of whatever you're working on. The books, the podcasts, the advice from friends, the online rabbit holes. And maybe you're still stuck — or you're tired of being stuck alone. That's a common time to seek coaching.

But coaching isn't the right next step for everyone, and knowing how to identify what kind of support you actually need could save you thousands of dollars and months of spinning.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The two clearest signals that it's time to stop going it alone and invest in coaching support
• How to distinguish between coaching and therapy — and why a high-caliber coach will always tell you if you need the latter first
• Three questions to ask any coach before you hire them — and the red flags to watch for in their answers
• Why the monetary investment in coaching is often the first psychological vote you cast for yourself
• How to calculate what sitting on this decision has already cost you — in time, energy, and indecision

Coaching is not a transaction. It's a transformation. And the right coach, at the right time, for the right reasons, can change everything.

Changeology is a podcast about the real, messy, nonlinear process of personal change — hosted by Dr. Meg Trucano, developmental psychologist and life and career change coach.

Send us Fan Mail

You can meditate for hours a day, journal every morning, see the nutritionists, take the supplements, do every single thing "right"— and still feel like absolute garbage. 

That's where guest Alexa Martinez found herself in 2023: running a successful coaching business, doing all the right things, and feeling worse than she ever had in her life. The problem wasn't her habits. It was that her business had become her God — the sun at the center of her solar system — and everything else, her relationship, her health, her community, her joy, was just orbiting it.

Alexa Martinez is a success and leadership coach, host of the Full of Herself podcast, and one of the more genuinely disruptive voices in the conversation around what it actually means to build a successful life as a self-employed woman. Her work is a direct challenge to the metrics-obsessed, productivity-worshipping framework that the online coaching industry handed her — and that she, despite knowing better, completely bought into.

I'm willing to bet you know this territory. You say you don't care about the hustle. You say you have values. But underneath it all, you've quietly reduced your worth to your output, your revenue, your numbers — and you can't figure out why none of it feels like enough. The finish line keeps moving. The milestone arrives. The feeling doesn't.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why burnout isn't a time management problem. It's what happens when your business becomes your entire sense of self and value
• How to identify your actual values versus the ones you think you should have...and why most high achievers are "full of sh*t" about this distinction
• What it means to decentralize your business and what you put at the center instead
• Why traditional success is, as Meg argues, the easy path — and what it actually costs you to stay on it
• The concrete practice Alexa uses with her clients to turn values from a one-time exercise into a daily decision-making framework

Success isn't the finish line. It's the framework — and until you build your own, you're running someone else's race.

Connect with Alexa: 

Website: https://www.alexamartinezcoaching.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexacoaches

Substack: https://substack.com/@alexamartinez

Podcast: Full of Herself

Changeology is a podcast about the real, messy, nonlinear process of personal change — hosted by Dr. Meg Trucano, developmental psychologist and change coach.

Send us Fan Mail

You can hit every goal, nail every KPI, build the business, even travel the world in luxury with clients — and still stand at a sink one afternoon knowing something has to change. That's exactly where Sarah Reuter found herself before walking away from a multimillion-dollar events company with no plan, no safety net, and no clarity about what was next. 

All she had was a feeling she couldn't ignore anymore.

In this episode of Changeology, host and transformational coach Dr. Meg Trucano talks with Sarah Reuter — events industry veteran, embodiment coach, and founder of the Revive and Thrive program — about what it actually looks like to trust your intuition when everything on paper says stay.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How emotional avoidance masquerades as busyness and productivity--and how to recognize it in yourself
• What intuition actually feels like in the body, and why it doesn't come from your mind
• How to rebuild your identity after walking away from a career, a role, or a version of yourself
• The "head trash record" exercise that surfaces the subconscious story you keep pressing play on
• Why anxiety is a signal of misalignment, not a problem to suppress

If you've been carrying a quiet but persistent sense that something's off — and wondering whether to trust it — this conversation is for you.

Connect with Sarah:

https://www.experienceselevatedconsulting.com/ 

Changeology is a podcast about the real, messy, nonlinear process of personal change — hosted by life and change coach, Dr. Meg Trucano.

Send us Fan Mail

Most people stall out waiting for clarity before they act. But clarity isn't something you think your way to--it's something you build by moving.

In this final episode of Changeology's three-part series on the zones of change, host and life coach Meg Trucano breaks down the momentum zone: the messy middle of personal change where behavior starts to shift, identity begins to catch up, and the old version of your life fights hard to pull you back.

If you've been stuck in analysis paralysis — mentally running every scenario, waiting for certainty before you make a move — this episode reframes what you're actually waiting for.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why action produces clarity faster than contemplation ever could
• How the momentum zone's version of "interruption" is different from earlier stages of change
• Why self-trust is built after you move, not before — and what that actually looks like in practice
• How small, concrete actions in your career or relationships generate the real data you need to make better decisions
• How to identify which zone of change you're in so you're using the right strategy

Whether you're navigating a career pivot, a relationship crossroads, or a quieter but persistent sense that something needs to shift, this episode gives you a framework for getting unstuck — without waiting until you feel ready.

Send us Fan Mail

Most people assume that if they want change badly enough, clarity will eventually appear and it'll be smooth sailing from there.

But there’s a phase of personal change where the opposite happens:

You know something about your life isn’t working anymore. You think about changing careers, leaving a relationship, or redesigning your life entirely. You read books, listen to podcasts, and imagine different possibilities.

And yet… nothing actually changes.

In this episode, you’ll learn why wanting change isn’t enough to create it, how subtle psychological patterns keep people stuck in careers, relationships, and identities that no longer fit, and why the real work of this stage isn’t finding clarity.... but interrupting the automatic patterns that built your current life (that you want to change).

If you’ve ever felt stuck between knowing something has to change and having no idea what the next step is, this episode will help you understand exactly where you are in the change process and what actually moves you forward.

Send us Fan Mail

Grocery prices are rising. Food waste is everywhere. And most of us approach habit change the same way we approach cooking: all in or not at all.

In this episode of Changeology, Meg talks with Sophia Lin Kanno (The Spicy Grasshopper), a home chef, food efficiency expert, zero-waste educator, and Food Network champion, about how sustainable change actually works.

You’ll learn practical strategies for cooking on a budget, reducing food waste, and building sustainable habits that stick. But this conversation goes deeper than meal planning or grocery savings. It explores how small, imperfect actions build momentum, strengthen self-trust, and break the cycle of all-or-nothing thinking.

If you’re trying to create lasting behavior change — in your kitchen or in your life — this episode offers a grounded, practical starting point.

Connect with Sophia:

• Website: The Spicy Grasshopper
• Instagram: @thespicygrasshopper
• Facebook: The Spicy Grasshopper (group)

Send us Fan Mail

Change doesn’t fail because you don’t want it badly enough. It fails when your system is overwhelmed and survival is running the show. 

In this episode, I break down one of the most misunderstood phases of change: the Instability Zone. This is the first episode in a three-part series discussing the three zones of change. Here, in the Instability Zone, we focus on what happens when change is imposed, rather than chosen. 

Layoffs. Health diagnoses. Caregiving. Institutional collapse. The moments when urgency is loud, clarity is gone, and everyone keeps asking what you’re going to do next.

If you’ve ever felt frozen, panicked, exhausted by decisions you haven’t even made yet, or ashamed that you “should know what's next by now,” this episode will give you language for what’s actually happening. More importantly, it will tell you what not to do—and what does help—when you’re in true instability.

This episode is for anyone navigating abrupt, identity-shaking change and wondering why motivation, confidence, or future-thinking feel completely out of reach right now.

In This Episode:

• Why change is a process, not a single decision—and why desire alone can’t override instability
• How to recognize when you’re in the Instability Zone (hint: urgency without clarity)
• What’s really happening psychologically when your brain cannot manage to think about the future
• How grief disguises itself as urgency and drives panic-driven decisions 
• The difference between what ended and what didn’t—and why that distinction matters
• Why orientation comes before pivoting, rebranding, or “figuring it out”
• How rushing decisions in instability often makes change harder, not faster