COACHED with Coach Keren

What if your life wasn’t over… but just beginning again?

In this deeply moving Coaching Masters conversation, Keren sits down with Leslie Fraley—founder of Fine Folk and now emerging coach and founder of Second Act—to explore the courage it takes to reinvent yourself in real time.

Leslie built a beautiful, successful life: a celebrated retail business, a strong community, a family.

And then—like so many high-functioning, high-achieving women—she hit a moment of quiet unraveling.

Not a breakdown.

A reckoning.

Through coaching, Leslie began to see something she hadn’t allowed herself to fully consider before:

There was more.

Not more to achieve—but more to become.

This conversation traces her journey through resistance, self-doubt, identity shifts, and ultimately—stepping into a new chapter rooted in service, authenticity, and self-trust.

It’s about what it means to let go of who you’ve been…

and gently, bravely, begin again.

What We Cover:

• The “void” moment that precedes transformation
• Why resistance is the doorway—not the obstacle
• Coaching vs. therapy (and why the distinction matters)
• Learning to trust intuition over ego
• Building self-trust through action
• The concept of a “Second Act” in life
• Divorce, grief, and shared human experience
• The power of community in healing and growth
• Identity as something you choose—not inherit
• The connection between clothing, self-expression, and truth
• Self-doubt and the daily practice of self-love
• The difference between understanding the work vs. embodying it
• Purpose as a practice—not a destination
• Becoming a teacher by living the work

Key Takeaways:

Resistance is not a sign you’re off track—it’s where the work begins.

You don’t find purpose. You practice it.

Identity is something you wear—and you can choose it.

You can wear the identity, or the identity can wear you.

Self-trust is built by stepping into the unknown—and watching the ground appear.

Growth is not about knowing where you’re going. It’s about moving anyway.

The most powerful teachers are those who are living the work in real time.

There is no “there.” Only here—and how you choose to meet it.

About the Guest:

Leslie Fraley is a fashion and lifestyle entrepreneur, founder of Fine Folk—a boutique and style studio recognized by Vogue—and the creator of Second Act, an emerging coaching platform designed to help women reconnect with themselves and step into a new chapter of life with clarity, confidence, and authenticity.

Her work blends aesthetic curation, personal transformation, and deep inner work to help women rediscover who they are—and express it fully.

Connect with Leslie:

Website: lesliefraley.com

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

Fine Folk: https://finefolk.com

Leslie’s new coaching platform and website are launching soon—check the show notes for updates and live links as they become available.

🔗 CONNECT WITH COACH KEREN

Website: https://kereneldad.com/

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

Schedule a Free Consultation with Coach Keren: https://calendly.com/kereneldad/consultation/

📚 Coach Keren's Books: GILDED: Break Free From the Cage of Ambition, Perfectionism, and the Relentless Pursuit of More → https://tinyurl.com/ykf4z95w

This week on COACHED, I sit down with Michelle Sorro - former television host and live-commerce powerhouse with more than $222 million in sales, master coach, entrepreneur, speaker, and host of the top 1% Fire & Soul podcast.

Michelle’s first major awakening came after achieving the career she thought she wanted - only to realize she was being called toward something entirely different. What followed was not one reinvention, but many: leaving television, building a transformation business, moving through a profound spiritual awakening, confronting addiction and old nervous-system patterns, discovering the Gene Keys and somatic work, and ultimately rebuilding her life around truth, spaciousness, embodiment and inner authority.

That makes this conversation particularly important for the high achiever.

So many of us unconsciously assume that becoming more powerful will require becoming more exhausted. Michelle makes the opposite case: the case for slowing down enough to hear what is actually true for you.

To this end, talk about the difference between force and inspired action, why achievement can disconnect us from our bodies, how to distinguish genuine inner knowing from anxiety and conditioning, and why the very patterns we are desperate to eliminate may contain the gifts we are here to express.

We also explore her methodology, traversing the Gene Keys, somatics, nervous-system regulation, inner-child work, addiction, our increasingly compulsive relationship with technology, and why human-to-human connection may be becoming one of our most precious commodities.

Michelle even gives us an extraordinarily simple somatic practice for the moments when you notice yourself controlling, proving, pleasing or forcing.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Michelle’s journey from television and $222M+ in live sales to transformational work
• The moment she realized the career she had fought for was no longer her destiny
• Why reinvention requires the courage to release identities that once worked
• How to distinguish a true inner directive from fear, ego, conditioning or noise
• Why high achievers become disconnected from their bodies
• The Gene Keys and Michelle’s approach to turning our deepest patterns into gifts
• Why insight alone rarely changes behavior — and where somatics enters the picture
• The radical power of honoring your own energetic seasons
• Michelle’s six-to-eight-hour workweek and why sacred rest became non-negotiable
• Wu Wei and the principle of effortless action
• Why working harder and earning more are not inherently correlated
• Michelle’s private struggle with cigarettes and the moment she finally stopped bargaining with herself
• The hidden function underneath addiction and compulsive behavior
• Why our devices may be one of the great threats to presence, agency and real connection
• How to notice whether you are operating from control or people-pleasing
• A simple inner-child practice for creating safety
• Michelle’s 30-second somatic check-in for returning to the present moment
• Why vulnerability can make a leader more compelling, not less
• The shift from fighting our patterns to learning how to work with them
• Why in-person connection and sacred space matter more than ever

CONNECT WITH MICHELLE

Website: Michelle Sorro

Instagram: @michellesorro

Podcast: Fire & Soul

CONNECT WITH COACH KEREN

Apply for Coaching: www.KerenEldad.com

What if the thing you’ve been working so hard to fix… isn’t actually the problem?

This week on COACHED, I sit down with Kevin St. Clergy, author, business coach, and creator of the Beyond Blind Blaming™ Framework, to explore why smart, capable people can spend years solving the wrong problem - and wondering why nothing changes.

Spoiler alert -it’s because they are asking the wrong questions.

In this epic conversation. we talk about the personal experiences that led Kevin to this work, the cognitive biases that keep us attached to the wrong diagnosis, why business owners so often assume they have a marketing problem when something else is broken, and Kevin’s simple RCD Method: Reflect. Connect. Decide.

We also get into sales, coachability, the importance of outside perspective, and why insight means very little unless you are willing to make a decision and do something differently.

If you’re working ever harder and still not getting the result, this episode offers one powerful possibility:

Maybe you’re not stuck. Maybe you’re solving the wrong problem.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• What Blind Blaming™ is - and how to recognize it
• Availability bias and confirmation bias
• Kevin’s Reflect. Connect. Decide. framework
• Why outside perspective matters
• Sales, listening, and the power of silence
• Coachability and humility
• MFD: Make Fucking Decisions
• Why different results require different action

🔗 CONNECT WITH COACH KEREN

Website: https://kereneldad.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachkeren/

Schedule a Free Consultation with Coach Keren: https://calendly.com/kereneldad/consultation/

📚 Coach Keren's Books: GILDED: Break Free From the Cage of Ambition, Perfectionism, and the Relentless Pursuit of More → https://tinyurl.com/ykf4z95w

GILT FREE: Breaking Free From The Gilded Cage For Good → https://tinyurl.com/2burcnjb

Have you noticed that you can understand your wounds, know your patterns, talk beautifully about healing - and still keep living exactly the same life?

In this episode, we are about to change that, as Coach Keren sits down with Stefanos Sifandos, whose work lives at the intersection of healing, intimacy, relationships and embodiment, for an extraordinarily honest conversation about what it actually takes to change.

Stefanos shares his journey through childhood pain, addiction, destructive relationships and relentless overachievement - and why so much of our striving is really an attempt to earn the love, safety and validation we once lacked.

We talk about why high achievers often keep intimacy at a distance, the difference between insight and embodiment, why real transformation happens relationally, and how compassion, consistency and action can finally make us whole.

Because awareness is not the finish line.

The way you live is.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Why overachievement can become an addiction to validation
• The childhood wounds underneath adult patterns
• Why intimacy can feel unsafe for high performers
• Awareness vs. actual embodiment
• The power of compassion and non-judgment
• Why transformation requires consistency and action
• What it really means to become whole

🔗 CONNECT WITH STEFANOS SIFANDOS

Website: https://stefanossifandos.com/

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

Book: Tuned In And Turned On - https://stefanossifandos.com/single-book-order/

🔗 CONNECT WITH COACH KEREN Website: https://kereneldad.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachkeren/

Schedule a Free Consultation with Coach Keren: https://calendly.com/kereneldad/consultation/

📚 Coach Keren's Books: GILDED: Break Free From the Cage of Ambition, Perfectionism, and the Relentless Pursuit of More → https://tinyurl.com/ykf4z95w

GILT FREE: Breaking Free From The Gilded Cage For Good → https://tinyurl.com/2burcnjb

What happens when your business evolves - but your message does not?

In this episode of COACHED, Coach Keren Eldad sits down with messaging strategist, brand advisor, bestselling author and eight-figure entrepreneur Julie Solomon for a conversation about visibility, identity, reinvention and the messaging mistakes that can quietly keep even highly accomplished entrepreneurs stuck.

Julie shares the deeply personal story behind her own reinvention: leaving the traditional PR world, becoming a new mother, accumulating $30,000 in credit-card debt, confronting the impact it was having on her marriage, and ultimately rebuilding her career and business on very different terms.

But the heart of this conversation is what happened after Julie became successful.

She began to realize that the conventional advice to “serve an earlier version of yourself” had stopped working.

Her expertise had evolved.

Her clients had evolved.

She had evolved.

But parts of her messaging were still speaking to a version of herself she had long since outgrown.

Julie introduces her framework of the Former Self, Working Self and Highest Self and explains why each responds to radically different messaging.

The Former Self responds to pain and struggle.

The Working Self consumes information, tips and endless education - often mistaking learning for actual progress.

The Highest Self is ready to make decisions and move toward transformation.

And therein lies the shift: in knowing that the promise matters more than the pain.

Together, Keren and Julie explore what this means not only for marketing, but for leadership: knowing when you are helping versus rescuing, recognizing when over-teaching is actually keeping prospective clients from making decisions, allowing your message to evolve with your mastery, and becoming willing to release strategies, clients and ways of working that no longer fit who you have become.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Julie’s journey from burned-out publicist to eight-figure entrepreneur
• The financial rock bottom that forced her to take stock of her life
• Why Julie believes we should not always rescue people from their rock bottoms
• Why your ideal client may not be an earlier version of you
• The difference between the Former Self, Working Self and Highest Self
• Why pain-point marketing can attract clients who are not ready for your work
• How over-educating your audience creates consumers instead of decision-makers
• Why sophisticated entrepreneurs often have a clarity problem, not a capability problem
• How to market toward desire and transformation rather than pain
• Why your personal story matters — but your “mess” should not become your message
• Authentic alignment versus performing the version of yourself you think will sell
• Why your body can tell you when a strategy no longer fits
• The power of creating space instead of continually adding more
• Julie’s next chapter and the surprising power she is finding in doing less

CONNECT WITH JULIE

Website: juliesolomon.net

Instagram: @julssolomon

Podcast: Woman of Influence

Book: Get What You Want: How to Go From Unseen to Unstoppable

What if the pressure you believe is responsible for your success… isn't?

In this episode of COACHED, Coach Keren sits down with bestselling author and entrepreneur Kate Northrup, whose groundbreaking books Money: A Love Story and Do Less have challenged conventional thinking about money, productivity, ambition and what it actually means to prosper.

At the center of the conversation is a deceptively simple question:

Who are you without the pressure?

Kate shares the intensely personal season that forced her to answer it. While supporting her husband through serious health challenges, raising two young daughters, carrying enormous financial responsibility and running a multi-seven-figure business, Kate discovered that stress wasn't merely something she was experiencing.

It had become her fuel.

When a therapist asked her to imagine that all of her financial pressure suddenly disappeared, Kate expected relief. Instead, she felt flat — almost dead inside. The realization was startling: she had become so accustomed to pressure, productivity and hypervigilance that ease itself felt unsafe.

What followed was a radical 90-day experiment in doing less. No new offers. No unnecessary campaigns. No compulsive over-delivering. Kate simply fulfilled the commitments she had already made while learning not to turn every moment of fear into more activity.

The result? She hit her financial goals anyway.

Together, Kate and Keren explore what happens when high achievement becomes a socially celebrated stress response — and what becomes possible when we learn to create from safety, inspiration and genuine desire instead.

• Why money is not only a mindset conversation — it's a body and nervous-system conversation
• How financial, productivity and achievement pressure can masquerade as ambition
• Kate's realization that she had become addicted to stress and pressure
• Why over-functioning can be a socially rewarded fight-or-flight response
• The 90-day experiment that taught Kate that pressure was not required for financial success
• Why periods of rest and reduced output can function like allowing soil to lie fallow
• The difference between doing less and doing nothing
• Why high achievers can become frightened by ease, stability and "cruising altitude"
• How to distinguish healthy ambition from hypervigilance
• The difference between creating for approval and creating because something genuinely wants to be expressed
• Productivity versus worthiness
• How scarcity and comparison affect the nervous system
• Why another person's success does not have to register as a threat
• What it means to cultivate an internal experience of safety, support and enoughness

Website: katenorthrup.com

Social: @KateNorthrup

Podcast: Plenty

Books: Money: A Love Story and Do Less

Kate also recommends beginning with her free Money Reset - https://katenorthrup.com/reset/, an audio journey exploring financial pressure and nervous-system regulation.

Website: KerenEldad.com

Social: @coachKeren

Consultation: Calendly.com/KerenEldad

Books: Gilded, Gilt Free

What happens when the thing you worked so hard to build… works — but you no longer want the life that comes with it?

Lacey Newman knows.

A former top 1% real estate team leader and host of an Emmy-nominated television show, Lacey built the kind of career most people would be terrified to walk away from. But behind the success was a business that required her to be constantly available, constantly reactive, and increasingly disconnected from the way she actually wanted to live.

So she did something most people struggle to do: she left while it was still working.

In this episode of COACHED, Lacey and I talk about what it really takes to outgrow a successful identity, why major pivots are rarely clean or comfortable, and how she learned to stop putting clients above herself and start building a business around her actual life.

We also get into the particular reckoning that often happens in midlife, when the question changes from Can I succeed? to: Do I actually want the life my success has created?

And perhaps most importantly, we talk about why the next level for highly capable women often requires subtraction, not addition.

Because if you have spent your life being the woman who can handle everything, the answer may not be becoming even more capable.

It may be finally deciding what you are no longer willing to carry.

• Why walking away from something successful can be harder than walking away from failure
• The hidden personal cost of being available to clients 24/7
• Why boundaries can actually make you better at what you do
• The difference between serving your clients and putting yourself beneath them
• Why you do not have to burn your old life to the ground in order to build a new one
• What Lacey calls “the ick” — and why your body may recognize misalignment before your mind is ready to admit it
• The messy reality of changing identities and careers
• Why midlife is such a powerful period of individuation and reinvention
• Why authenticity matters more, not less, in the age of AI
• The danger of becoming addicted to being “the most capable woman in the room”
• Why overwhelmed women often need to remove responsibilities rather than add another strategy
• The difference between changing your strategy and raising your standards
• Why Lacey believes creativity cannot be outsourced
• The deeper purpose behind the book she hopes to write next

Connect with Lacey Newman: https://laceynewman.com/

Lacey’s free workshop, AI for Ambitious Women, is on August 25th. Registration link: https://go.laceynewman.com/ai-for-ambitio us-women-workshop

Learn more about Coach Keren Eldad: www.kereneldad.com

Book a consultation: https://calendly.com/kereneldad

Ever heard someone say, “You give such good advice. You should be a coach”?

Not so fast.

Because coaching — real coaching — isn't about dispensing good advice. It is a discipline requiring training, practice, listening, discernment, and the ability to ask the right question rather than simply offer your opinion. And excellent coaching requires something considerably harder to put on a website:

You have to do your own work.

In this episode of The COACHED Podcast: Coaching Masters, Coach Keren sits down with executive and leadership coach Carrie Fabris, founder of CareerFrame and author of ALL IN: A Working Mom’s Unapologetic Quest for a Juicy Life, to examine what actually makes a great coach.

Carrie and Keren share analogous paths into the profession: substantial corporate careers, rigorous training and accreditation, and the eventual realization that credentials and experience alone are not enough.

Carrie candidly shares why her first attempt at building CareerFrame failed, how ego, fear, imposter syndrome, inherited beliefs, and her own unexamined material followed her into her work, and why she ultimately had to go inward before she could successfully go outward again.

Today, Carrie describes excellent coaching as learning how to “read the human” in front of you: listening carefully, noticing what changes in their face, hearing what they are saying and what they are avoiding, and asking the right question rather than the impressive-sounding one.

Because you cannot take another human being somewhere you are unwilling to go yourself.

In this conversation:

• Why giving great advice does not make someone a great coach
• Why coaching is a discipline — not simply a personality trait
• What real corporate experience brings to executive coaching
• Why Carrie's first attempt at CareerFrame didn't work
• The difference between ego-driven ambition and genuine alignment
• Why Carrie returned to corporate — and eventually realized she couldn't stay there either
• Fear, imposter syndrome, inherited beliefs, and the inner work that changed her trajectory
• Why credentials, frameworks, and assessments matter — but aren't enough
• What it means to truly “read the human” you're coaching
• Why great coaches listen instead of rushing to advise
• The difference between asking a question and asking the right question
• Why a coach's own unexamined material inevitably enters the room
• The essential truth at the heart of great coaching: you have to do your own work

CONNECT WITH CARRIE

Learn more about Carrie and CareerFrame:

CareerFrame

Read ALL IN: A Working Mom’s Unapologetic Quest for a Juicy Life:

Get ALL IN

Follow Carrie on Instagram:

@cdfabris

ABOUT COACHING MASTERS

Coaching Masters is a series from The COACHED Podcast devoted to positioning coaching as the serious profession it is by examining what excellent coaching actually looks like, what qualifies someone to do this work, and what those entrusted with another person's growth owe to the human being sitting across from them.

Listen to the full episode of The COACHED Podcast with Coach Keren Eldad.

What if everything you've worked so hard to build isn't freedom...but a beautifully decorated cage?

In this special episode, Coach Keren Eldad shares the full introduction to her bestselling new book, Gilt Free: Ditching Your Gilded Cage for Good.

If you've ever felt successful on paper yet strangely disconnected from yourself...

If you've checked every box but still wondered, "Is this really it?"

If you've built an impressive life while quietly sacrificing peace, joy, authenticity, or freedom...

this episode was written for you.

Inside this exclusive preview you'll discover:

• Why success without freedom is still a cage

• The hidden psychological trap high achievers rarely recognize

• The fascinating story of Consuelo Vanderbilt and the original "gilded cage"

• Carl Jung's concept of individuation—and why becoming yourself is the privilege (and fight) of a lifetime

• The moment that changed Keren's own life forever

• Why Gilt Free isn't about becoming more successful—it's about becoming more free

Whether you're an entrepreneur, executive, leader, creator, parent, or simply someone who's tired of performing your life instead of living it, this conversation will challenge the way you think about achievement.

In This Episode

✔ Why modern achievement often leaves us feeling empty

✔ The surprising psychology behind overachievement

✔ The invisible "performance" so many successful people are living

✔ Why insight alone never creates transformation

✔ Introducing the Anti-Rules—the counterintuitive principles that create genuine freedom

✔ The difference between guilt and gilt

Ready to Go Deeper?

📖 Get your copy of Gilt Free

https://www.amazon.com/Gilt-Free-Ditching-Your-Gilded/dp/B0GY5ZNHPK/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Uq_7tgTOv9fIqe_tOXuQJx5GHH9sJpou5R2e9abTCyvGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.y5mfuMw55-XTNGNP0CaUexzwFG-bTjyqp7uHgmvSNiw&dib_tag=se&keywords=gilt+free+keren+eldad&qid=1784581218&sr=8-1

🌐 Learn more about private coaching and events

https://www.kereneldad.com

🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@kereneldad2960

📅 Book a Coaching Consultation with Coach Keren Eldad: https://calendly.com/kereneldad/consultation?back=1

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who's ready to stop performing success and start living it.

What if the exhaustion, perfectionism, people-pleasing, burnout, and imposter syndrome you have spent years trying to fix are not actually the problem?

What if they are symptoms of something deeper?

In this deeply moving conversation, Coach Keren sits down with coach, speaker, and author Annalie Howling to explore the hidden force that drives so many high achievers: shame.

Annalie shares her extraordinary personal journey from a violent childhood, chronic self-doubt, and self-harm to becoming one of the leading voices on shame, trauma, and healing. Together, they unpack why achievement can never heal unworthiness, why burnout is often a wake-up call rather than a failure, and how self-compassion becomes the antidote to the belief that we are somehow not enough.

This episode is a powerful reminder that healing is not about becoming someone else. It is about finally coming home to yourself.

In This Episode

• Why high achievement often becomes a strategy for outrunning shame
• The critical difference between guilt and shame
• How childhood experiences shape adult identity and self-worth
• Burnout as a symptom of living out of alignment
• Why perfectionism and people-pleasing are survival mechanisms
• Understanding imposter syndrome through the lens of shame
• How Annalie transformed her relationship with her inner critic
• The role of EMDR and trauma healing in lasting transformation
• Why receiving compliments feels uncomfortable for so many people
• The connection between self-compassion and true freedom
• How to begin healing shame one small act of self-kindness at a time

Memorable Quotes

"I wasn't intolerant to gluten. I was intolerant to my life."

"Shame is always an 'I am' statement."

"The imposter's job is to police our shame from ever being discovered."

"There is a cure for shame, and it is self-compassion."

"Start by learning about yourself. Then liking yourself. Then loving yourself."

Connect with Annalie

📖 Book: Unapologetic: Unshackle Your Shame, Reclaim Your Power

🌐 Website: Annalie Howling

📸 Instagram: @annaliehowling

Listener Invitation

If this conversation resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who needs it. You never know who may be carrying shame in silence.