In this episode of The Tessa Tubbs Podcast, Tessa sits down with Bryan Neely for a powerful conversation on resilience, faith, identity, and the quiet strength it takes to keep rising when life does not unfold the way you imagined.

Bryan is the owner of Billy Goat Coffee Cafe, a Krav Maga instructor, Young Life Ministry leader, ultra marathoner, military funeral honors officer, TEDx speaker, and author of Embrace Your Roar: A Call to Stop Comparing, Start Rising, and Step Into the Life You Were Created For. His story is marked by deep faith, personal grief, military transition, rejection, endurance, and a commitment to turning obstacles into opportunities for growth and service.

Together, Tessa and Bryan explore what it means to hit rock bottom with your “rock” in the right place, how faith and community can help remind you who you are, and why rising is not always dramatic. Often, it is one honest decision repeated over time.

Bryan shares how self-talk, doing hard things, surrounding yourself with the right people, and staying connected to purpose have helped him move through breaking points and become a stronger, more grounded version of himself.

This episode is for anyone walking through hardship, rebuilding after disappointment, or learning how to lead themselves with courage, humility, and intention.

Listen in for a conversation on self-leadership, resilience, emotional endurance, faith, personal growth, and choosing to rise into who you are becoming.

For more on Bryan check out his links:

Business:

BILLY GOAT COFFEE CAFE

Books:

Embrace Your Roarrr: The Key To Rising Up In Everything You Do

Mile 17 Devotional: Where Breaking Points Become Breakthroughs

Socials:

Instagram

Facebook

LinkedIn

In this episode of The Tessa Tubbs Podcast, Tessa shares a simple five-minute reflection practice leaders can use at the end of the day to build greater self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and intentional leadership.

Rather than adding another complicated routine or lengthy journaling exercise, this practice invites you to pause and ask honest, compassionate questions: Where did I feel most like the leader I aim to be today? Where did I lead from insecurity, urgency, or ego? What might I try differently tomorrow?

Self-awareness does not grow through self-criticism. It grows through recognition. By taking a few quiet moments to observe your impact, notice your patterns, and reflect without judgment, you create more room to lead with clarity, steadiness, and choice instead of reactivity.

This episode is for leaders, professionals, and anyone practicing self-leadership who wants to become more intentional in how they show up each day.

Ever walk out of a meeting feeling less like yourself than when you walked in?

In this episode, Tessa names a common but subtle self-abandonment pattern: softening your position when there’s tension, not because you learned something new, but because you felt displeasure in the room.

She breaks down the “tells” many of us don’t notice until after the meeting is over:

• Adding qualifiers, over-explaining, or quickly finding something to agree with just to restore warmth
• Mistaking conflict-avoidance for collaboration, then leaving with an outcome you didn’t actually want
• Creating “meetings outside the meeting” because the real conversation never happened in the room

You’ll learn how to hold your ground without being combative, acknowledge different viewpoints without dismantling your own, and leave the room with integrity and clarity.

If you’ve been people-pleasing in professional settings or quietly eroding your voice to keep things smooth, this episode will help you lead yourself differently.

More at TessaTubbs.com

Setting boundaries doesn’t have to sound cold, defensive, or overly emotional. In this episode of The Tessa Tubbs Podcast, Tessa shares a handful of simple, repeatable sentences you can use to say no with clarity while still protecting the relationship.

You’ll learn:

• How to decline a request without over-explaining or apologizing for your boundary
• The “redirect” approach: “That doesn’t work for me, but here’s what does”
• How to frame a boundary as an act of care, especially in close relationships
• How to say “I’m not the right person for that” without guilt, and still be helpful by offering an alternative

If you’ve been avoiding boundaries because you don’t want to disappoint people, this episode gives you language that’s firm, human, and clean, so you can stay honest without burning bridges.

Learn More at TessaTubbs.com

How do you tell the difference between being supportive… and over-functioning for someone?

In this short episode of The Tessa Tubbs Podcast, Tessa offers a simple distinction that can change the way you lead, parent, partner, and collaborate:

Support empowers. Over-functioning replaces.

Tessa breaks down what over-functioning actually is: substituting your capacity for someone else’s, often because watching them struggle makes you uncomfortable, you want things to move faster, or you’ve learned to feel useful by stepping in.

She also names the deeper truth: over-functioning is frequently more about the helper than the person being helped. It can relieve your discomfort, satisfy your need to feel needed or in control, and unintentionally communicate to the other person that you don’t believe they can handle it on their own.

To stay honest, Tessa shares the question she uses as a real-time check:
“Whose comfort am I serving right now?”

If you’ve been exhausted from carrying too much, rescuing too quickly, or feeling responsible for outcomes that aren’t yours, this episode will help you build healthier support, clearer boundaries, and stronger self-leadership.

Learn More at TessaTubbs.com

Many of us are carrying responsibility, expectations, and care for others, often with very little room to be fully human ourselves. This conversation lives right there, not in performance or polish, but in the real work of showing up honestly, being seen, and creating safe space for others without abandoning yourself.

In this episode of The Tessa Tubbs Podcast, Tessa sits down with Rachael Lewis, owner of Honey and Sage Salon and former educator, to talk about reinvention, vulnerability, and what it costs (and gives) to choose alignment over expectation. Rachael shares her courageous shift from teaching during the COVID era to hair school, the sacrifices that came with it, and the freedom she found on the other side.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why vulnerability isn’t “one and done,” it’s a lived state of being
• The hidden weight of staying in soul-sucking environments, and what changes when you finally choose presence over protection
• How to navigate judgment, disruption, and the real barriers that make change complex
• Creating safe space and community, including what it means to be a trusted “beacon” for others
• Over-functioning, boundaries, and the self-leadership skill of saying “no” without guilt
• Why you shouldn’t light yourself on fire to keep someone else warm

If you’ve been holding everyone else up while quietly disappearing yourself, this episode will help you rethink what you’re tolerating, reclaim your boundaries, and choose a life that actually holds up.

Connect with Rachael Lewis / Honey and Sage Salon:
Website: honeyandsagessalon.com
Instagram / TikTok / Facebook: @HoneyandSageSalon
Also: @SaltandWavesHair

See Rachel's TedX Talk Here: https://youtu.be/EcrlmMtG-uU?si=noWUvH4aT5y_ok59

What’s the boundary you wish you’d learned a decade earlier?

In this episode of The Tessa Tubbs Podcast, Tessa answers with a truth that hits a lot of high-functioning people right in the chest: your availability is not the same as your commitment.

Tessa reflects on a season where she treated being available as generosity and “yes” as proof of value, only to realize that radical availability can be an angst-driven pattern rooted in not trusting that your real value is enough. She unpacks how she made herself indispensable through access, and what boundary work taught her about protecting energy, focusing on what matters most, and thinking through the downstream trade-offs of automatic yeses.

You’ll hear why over-availability can quietly turn you into “infrastructure” in relationships instead of a mutual person, and how constantly responding keeps you from initiating the life you actually want.

If you’ve been exhausted, overextended, or resentful while telling yourself you’re just being helpful, this episode will help you reconnect to self, set cleaner boundaries, and make choices that protect what deserves your deepest focus.

Learn more at TessaTubbs.com

Many of us inherit a simple, seductive belief about success: you earn it through sacrifice. You outwork, outlast, outperform. You prove your worth through visible output, and rest isn’t rewarded.

In this solo episode of The Tessa Tubbs Podcast, Tessa unpacks how deeply this mindset can get wired into us through family, culture, and professional environments and how it can quietly train you to equate productivity with worth.

She shares how her relationship with stillness exposed the belief operating underneath the surface, and the “reckoning moments” that forced a new question: am I doing this because it’s right, or because proving it feels like it justifies the cost?

Ultimately, Tessa offers a powerful redefinition:
Success is alignment between how you live and what you actually believe, not just what you achieve.

If you’ve been living in go-go-go mode, measuring yourself by output, and feeling uneasy when you slow down, this episode will help you reassess the trade-offs and build a new metric: a through line of integrity.

Learn More at TessaTubbs.com

What happens when your life looks exactly the way it’s “supposed” to look… but it doesn’t feel like yours?

In this solo episode of The Tessa Tubbs Podcast, Tessa shares a defining moment from her corporate career: a prestigious, high-visibility “destination” role that checked every box, yet carried a quiet grief she couldn’t ignore. She unpacks the difference between doing what’s admired and doing what’s true, and why “should” can be seductive while still pulling you out of alignment.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• How to recognize when you’re trying to “talk yourself into” a life that isn’t meant for you

• Why “I should be grateful” can sometimes mask misalignment

• The decision filter Tessa uses now: not “Is it right or coveted?” but “Is it true for me?”

• How choosing truth changes what you say yes to, how you lead yourself, and the contentment you experience day to day

If you’ve ever felt successful on paper but unsettled on the inside, this episode is an invitation to stop living by default and start choosing from truth.

What does it look like to stay anchored to purpose when the plan changes, outcomes aren’t guaranteed, and the path forward isn’t straight?

In this episode of The Tessa Tubbs Podcast, Tessa sits down with Christi Dortch, whose career spans the performing arts and entertainment world as a performer, director, administrator, consultant, and behind-the-scenes builder of sustainable systems. Together, they explore a powerful framework: purpose as the compass, passion as the fuel, and endurance as the way forward, especially in seasons where certainty is absent.

You’ll hear:

• What it required emotionally for Christi to step off the road as a performer and let go of a long-held plan
• How to separate authentic direction from “should” noise, expectations, and fear
• Why silence and pausing can reveal whether fear is driving your choices or purpose is
• A reframe on failure: not a stop sign, but information and feedback
• How to sustain passion without burning out using what Christi calls a “diversified portfolio” of joy, creativity, and restoration
• A reminder for anyone feeling timid or stuck: start internally, light your own flame, and define what “success today” actually means

This conversation is an invitation to stop living by default, return to your internal compass, and build a life that holds up over time even when the plan has to change.

About Christi Dortch:

Christi Dortch brings more than three decades of experience at the intersection of performance, leadership, and innovation in the arts. She is known nationally for cultivating new work, developing artist-audience-community ecosystems, and forging strategies that elevate both mission and margin.

A seasoned arts executive, producer, and consultant, Christi Dortch brings more than 35 years of expertise across venue management, creative production, and strategic development. Her career spans leadership in some of the country’s most respected performing arts institutions, from multi-theatre campuses to immersive experience startups, guiding both established venues and emerging ventures through expansion, innovation, and reinvention.

Christi has held executive leadership roles across the nonprofit and commercial sectors, including serving as Executive Vice President of Programming at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. She has led teams delivering regional premieres, new musicals, and nationally broadcast specials at historic venues like War Memorial Auditorium and Westport Country Playhouse. Her strategic influence spans the full organizational spectrum -from frontline teams to C-suite leaders and Boards of Directors- making her a trusted leader in both day-to-day operations and long-range planning. Through her consultancy, Airlie Strategies, Christi has guided cultural institutions across the South and Midwest in designing long-term programming plans, building revenue infrastructure, and connecting artists with communities. Her work is deeply informed by experience in financial strategy, artist development, community engagement, product launches, retail brand collaborations, and operational systems from policies and procedures to performance metrics.

Her work is grounded in creative vision and operational precision, shaping transformative projects from immersive IP-based experiences, to multi-year strategies for historic theaters, museums, and multidisciplinary festivals. She has served as a TEDx speaker, conference producer, and trusted advisor for organizations such as the Jewel Theatre, Franklin Theatre, TN Presenters, and History &Culture Center of Williamson County.

Connect with Christi:
Airelie Strategies (consulting): Airlie-Strategies.com
Email: [email protected]