The Perfectly Imperfect Journey

In this episode, we dive into the profound lessons our furry friends teach us daily. From gratitude to unconditional love, animals show us the qualities we often neglect in our fast-paced lives. Sherry and Anne share personal stories about our own pets and explore how caring for any living being—whether a pet, a garden, or another person—enriches our lives in deeply meaningful ways. 

Which mountain are you climbing? That’s the exact question Bonnie Wan asked herself when her life hit a crisis point, both at work and at home. Instead of staying stuck, Bonnie went all in—taking the same tools she mastered as an Advertising Strategy Director and turning them inward. The result? She created a Life Brief—a no-holds-barred roadmap to how she truly wanted to live. And she didn’t just skim the surface. Bonnie dug deep into her core values, peeled back her beliefs, and got crystal clear on what she wanted to feel every day.

Spoiler alert: It worked. Bonnie unlocked achievements beyond her wildest dreams, and now she’s on a mission to help others do the same with her book, The Life Brief, plus workshops and talks worldwide. Don’t miss this episode where Bonnie explores her perfectly imperfect journey.  

Bio

Bonnie is creator and author of The Life Brief, a simple and profound action-driving practice that helps  people navigate life’s biggest and trickiest decisions with clarity, creativity and courage. 

The Life Brief applies the art and science of brand strategy to how we live our lives, helping people get clear, take meaningful action, and live with greater intention and imagination.  

As Partner and Head of Brand Strategy at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), Wan leads strategy for  Fortune 500 companies including Blackstone, BMW, Comcast/Xfinity, Frito-Lay, and Kraft-Heinz. She also  harnesses strategy to create powerful, provocative, award- winning campaigns fighting racial injustice,  child sex trafficking, cyberbullying, college campus rape, and gender inequality. Wan has been named an  Advertising Icon, an Ad Age Leading Woman, and Chief Strategy Officer of the Year.  

The Life Brief has evolved from an agency talk to keynotes, workshops and now a best-selling book. The  Life Brief: A Playbook for No Regrets Living is the essential tool for aligning your daily actions with your  ambition and values. As a Brand Strategist turned Life Strategist, Wan not only helps companies  innovate from a place of purpose, but also guides everyday people who seek to realize their potential. 

Wan has taught The Life Brief at Accenture, AirBnB, Apple, Change.org, Chief, Google, SXSW, and World  50 Group as well as for Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, and Jane Goodall’s Activating Hope Summit. 

Wan appears in Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein’s Masterclass on Advertising and Creativity and is  featured in the documentary film, The Big Flip, chronicling the lives of four women breadwinners and  their families. She has also been interviewed on Katie Couric’s Katie show and HuffPost Live. Her articles  have been featured by Fast Company, Campaign Magazine, AdAge, and Adweek. 

The Life Brief website: https://thelifebrief.com/

Kerri Kelly, author of American Detox, joins us on the podcast this week to talk about her life and the lessons she learned through the process of writing her book. Kerri takes us on parts of her journey, beginning with 9/11 and how that changed her life as she grappled with tremendous loss, both personally and societally.  Ultimately, Kerri takes a hard look at the way healthcare functions (or doesn’t), while never shying away from the role we as individuals play. While this all sounds heavy, Kerri’s willingness to laugh at herself, share her story so openly and encourage us all to think more collectively is incredibly uplifting.

Bio: 

Kerri is the founder of CTZNWELL, a movement that is democratizing wellbeing for all. A descendant of generations of firemen and first responders, Kerri has dedicated her life to kicking down doors and fighting for justice. She’s been teaching yoga for over 20 years and is known for making waves in the wellness industry by challenging norms, disrupting systems and mobilizing people to act. 

Links:

American Detox: https://www.americandetox.co/ 

CTZNWELL: https://www.ctznwell.org/ 

Julian Pistone had a lot of amazing things going for him: a great education, friends all over the world, and a fantastic job with one of the world’s most recognizable brands.  But his father's untimely death and two incredibly serious illnesses leveled Julian physically, mentally and spiritually.  As he lay completely immobile on the floor in his mother's home, Julian realized that neither numbing nor ignoring his pain was getting him through it. The only thing that helped him was to muster the courage to face it.  By being with his pain, the pain lost its control over him and a whole new way of looking at life was born.  

Bio

Julian Pistone is a former sales leader at Google, an international speaker, board member, and advisor to Fortune 500 companies.

After triumphing over two chronic illnesses, Julian's journey through pain ignited a mission to infuse courage into the world.

Blending nearly two decades of global corporate experience with a background in Buddhism and transpersonal psychology, Julian empowers individuals and teams to build courage, clarify their legacy intentions, and determine how they want to be remembered. His confrontation with mortality, disability, and mental illness led him to co-found Cor:age, a global impact network and retreat series that unites visionary makers — from political leaders and business executives to philanthropists, social advocates, investors, world-renowned scientists, and creatives — to catalyze change towards a more sustainable world.

Alongside award-winning filmmaker and National Geographic Explorer Juan Herrero, Julian is the creator of Cor:age Journeys — a content series that embarks on a mission across civilizations to explore the anatomy of courage and the transformative power of adversity. Through raw conversations with remarkable individuals, he uncovers extraordinary stories of human resilience and hope.

Julian is a global citizen who divides his time between The Americas and Europe, and speaks English, German, Spanish, Italian, and French. He travels the world, delivering keynote speeches and interviewing some of humanity’s bravest individuals, reminding us all how our darkest moments can reveal our most profound bravery.

Katia | Hope, Joy, and A Little Bit of Color

COR:AGE CONTENT SERIES trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8G-gykphN4

“Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Ferris Bueller

We love this quote from the 1986 movie that embraces living life to the fullest.  The problem is, as we age, we have increased responsibilities and a vision of “who we are supposed to be.” We let sneaky words like ‘should’, ‘must’, and ‘have to’ sneak into our vocabulary and we lose sight of our autonomy and the choices that we uniquely own.  Listen in to hear Sherry and Anne discuss how to be more intentional in your choices, and we invite you to consider how you can do life just a little more on purpose. 

Have you ever taken your eyes off the road, even for the briefest moment, to check your phone or look at the kids in the back seat?  That split-second glance was all Claire Carr had when she came upon a stopped vehicle—and three people—in her lane while traveling at 70 miles per hour.  As if in a movie, Claire let out a scream, cranked the wheel hard to try to avoid the stopped car and the people standing nearby.  And in that same blink of a second, everything in Claire’s world changed.  This is a story of tragedy and trauma, resilience and renewal.  

It is not a recipe she would recommend, but Fanny Slater mixed one part alcohol, one part low self esteem, a dash of fame, and a sprinkle of insecurity, and ultimately found herself spiraling down a tunnel headed straight for rock bottom.  Luckily Fanny also had a heap of support and love from friends and family which helped her when she needed it most.  This is a story about reinvention from the winner of a cooking contest on the Rachel Ray show to an aspiring sobriety mentor. Hers is a story about finding herself, after almost losing everything.  

Bio:

Fanny Slater has food flowing through her genes. Her mom founded the nationally acclaimed bakery business Rachel’s Brownies in 1975, and together—her parents created an enormously successful corporation that would live on for decades. Fanny grew up in Raleigh where, at age four, she began her home-taught kitchen apprenticeship when her dad pulled up a chair next to the stove and handed her a spatula. She worked in restaurants and prep kitchens to receive culinary exposure, but was equally drawn to performing arts. At twenty-five, Fanny moved to Hollywood, California to pursue acting and improv training with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles. Several years later, she followed her stomach back to the east coast to open her own catering company. She moved to Wilmington, North Carolina in 2012.

In 2014, she beat out nearly 1,000 other hopefuls from across the country who entered Rachael Ray’s Great American Cookbook Competition. Fanny won the grand prize of a publishing contract under Rachael’s imprint, and Simon & Schuster published her cookbook, Orange, Lavender & Figs: Deliciously Different Recipes from a Passionate Eater, in 2016. In the following years, Fanny co-hosted the Food Network series, Kitchen Sink and became a regular on Cooking Channel’s longtime popular series, Best Thing I Ever Ate. 

In 2020, Fanny was living in Illinois with her husband when her longtime issues with alcohol came to a head. Within one year, she would move back to North Carolina, get a divorce, come out of the closet, and attend a 40-day rehab program. Today, Fanny is 3+ years sober and living near the beach in Wilmington with her girlfriend, two dogs, and a cat. She works as a food and beverage writer specializing in recipe development, food photography, and content creation for social media. As of recent, Fanny has pivoted her focus towards being a sobriety enthusiast who encourages others to speak up about their struggles. She uses her Instagram platform @fannyslater to bluntly share her journey of going from a self-destructive addict to an advocate for mental health, recovery, and self-love.

What started as a mishap - trying to catch an exhibit at a local museum, only to find out it was closed that day -  turned into a mindfulness practice.  How does this happen?  Take two inspiring, creative women and set them loose in San Francisco with an unexpected few hours, and a whole new way of living their days was born.  An amazing Instagram page, a book and many workshops later, Willow and Deborah join the podcast to share what they’ve learned and engage Sherry and Anne in an impromptu “Today I Noticed” practice.  

Bio:

Willow Older and Deborah Huber are the founders of Today I Noticed, a creative mindfulness practice, and the authors of Today I Noticed: A Little Book of Mindfulness that Will Change the Way You See the World and the 2025 Today I Noticed: A Year of Inspiration and Mindfulness daily desk calendar. They lead mindfulness workshops for companies, teams, and conferences of all sizes.

Willow is an internationally published writer who runs her own editorial services business.

Deborah has spent her career in various creative and management roles in the tech industry designing and managing the development of digital products.

Sue Lambert survived her abusive childhood by numbing her pain with alcohol as she tried to live up to an idealized perfection standard.  Through pure guts and determination, Sue left home, did well at work, and started a family, but always felt that she was not “normal.”

Bio

Sue Lambert is an Enneagram Prison Project (EPP) Ambassador. She is also a retired EPP Faculty Member and Guide, a Life Coach, certified ACE (adverse childhood experiences) trainer, an IEA (International Enneagram Association) Accredited Professional, and Certified Narrative Enneagram Teacher. Sue identifies with Type 1 on the Enneagram and is passionate and driven to support others as they navigate their personal growth and development post-incarceration. She finds joy and fulfillment in nurturing others to reach their highest potential. Sue lives with her daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids and is “Nanny Granny” to them all. She feels a strong connection to her essential self when she is outside and enjoying nature and animals (horses/dogs/wildlife), where she knows in her heart that everything is “perfect” the way it is. Sue learned about the Enneagram and EPP behind bars and exemplifies the work, inspiring people worldwide to find inner freedom. Sue’s story includes what she describes as a dark time in her life, where she was also able to find light, and one of those light beams was the union she found with EPP, the Enneagram, and her true self, an impact she says saved her life.

Oprah Daily article on Sue: https://www.oprahdaily.com/life/health/a60583312/enneagram-test-prison-program/ 

She was at the top of her game with one of the world’s most iconic brands, doing the work that had taken her across the world and back multiple times. From the outside looking in, things looked really good for Shelley Paxton.

But, she had a secret.  Shelley would be awoken every night by the same nightmare and walked through her days with anxiety, both of which she tried to numb with busyness and alcohol. She finally reached a point where she couldn’t tolerate the pain of playing to someone else’s version of success and went on a journey to find her lost soul. 

Bio

Think Brené Brown meets Biker Babe, with a dash of Liz Gilbert. As former Chief

Marketing Officer of Harley-Davidson, Shelley Paxton found herself at the top of the

proverbial mountain feeling success-EMPTY instead of success-FULL. That awakening led

her on a profound journey that became her mission, business, and Simon & Schuster-

published bestselling book, Soulbbatical: A Corporate Rebel's Guide to Finding Your Best Life. 

She’s leading a REBELution to rewrite the script of success.

Shelley’s inspiring work has been featured on NBC, CBS, Forbes, Thrive Global, Inc.,

Business Insider, Yahoo!, and a TEDx stage.

Her signature keynote – “Where Soul Meets Success” – is an essential roadmap for

leaders and organizations to redefine success in ways that celebrate humanity, well-

being, and fulfillment. It’s the post-pandemic antidote to burnout and seeking.

She’s based in Chicago (when not indulging her wanderlust) and is obsessed with mental

health advocacy and the color orange.

Soulbbatical: A Corporate Rebel's Guide to Finding Your Best Life at Amazon