Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Melina Cordero, former real estate executive, speaker, facilitator, leadership development advisor, and founder of P20 Leadership. After building her career inside commercial real estate, Melina shifted her focus to helping organizations and leaders build stronger communication, trust, and inclusive cultures, with a major focus on helping women in commercial real estate become stronger leaders.

Melina was born in Washington, D.C., raised outside the city and later in New Jersey, and grew up bilingual in a bicultural Puerto Rican household that valued curiosity and reading. She studied urban studies and international development in grad school, focusing her thesis on the shopping mall explosion in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her early career wound through market research, a mobile data startup that closed suddenly, and then CBRE, where at 28 she became global head of retail research. She later stepped into leading CBRE's retail investment sales and capital markets brokers, the only woman and the only non-former-broker in that role, after her predecessor Mark Bratt put her name forward as his successor.

They discuss the power of sponsorship, why almost no successful CRE executives have a straight-line career path, splitting her time between Mexico City and D.C., leaving corporate to found P20 Leadership, her CRE Women's Leadership Lab and the Speak Up program, and the number driving her mission: female representation in commercial real estate's C-suite has moved just one percentage point in the last ten years.

🎯 Topics covered:

• Growing up bilingual in a bicultural Puerto Rican household
• Studying shopping mall development in Sao Paulo, Brazil
• Early jobs in market research and a mobile data startup
• Becoming global head of retail research at CBRE at 28
• Leading CBRE's capital markets brokers as the only woman
• The power of sponsorship and being put forward as a successor
• Why career paths are rarely a straight line
• Splitting time between Mexico City and Washington, D.C.
• Leaving corporate to found P20 Leadership
• The CRE Women's Leadership Lab and Speak Up program
• Why the C-suite gender gap has moved one point in ten years
• Changing what leadership looks like, not lowering the bar

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👤 Connect with Melina Cordero

Website: www.melinacordero.com 

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

Programs: CRE Women's Leadership Lab, Speak Up

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

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

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

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

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🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Alreen Haeggquist, founding and managing partner of Haeggquist & Eck LLP, recognized as one of the best law firms in America. For more than 23 years, Alreen has dedicated her career to standing up for people who have experienced sexual assault, sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and other workplace injustices. She is also the author of Fired Up: Fueling Triumph from Trauma, and founder of the HAE Fired Up Foundation.

Alreen grew up in the San Fernando Valley in a household with an abusive father and a mother who stayed silent. She moved to San Diego for UCSD, then attended Cal Western School of Law, discovering in college that education could be her way out. After realizing criminal defense work only made her sad, she spent five years at a class action firm before launching her own firm in 2008 with just $5,000 and no clients, at a time when woman-owned law firms were rare. She and her co-founder worked out of their home, reinvesting every dollar back into the firm, and slowly built it into a 25-person team.

They discuss why she never marketed at first, believing good work alone would bring clients, until she realized survivors didn't know she existed as an option, the case against Trump University, having a survivor advocate on staff to help clients process trauma, the emotional toll of writing her book and reliving suppressed memories, why releasing the book meant exposing her family's secret, breaking generational trauma for her daughter, and why her advice to her younger self is simple: start sooner.

🎯 Topics covered:
- Growing up with an abusive father and a silent mother
- Discovering college as her escape and path to law school
- Realizing criminal defense work wasn't her calling
- Five years at a class action firm before striking out alone
- Starting her firm in 2008 with $5,000 and no clients
- Learning that clients can't find you if they don't know you exist
- The case against Trump University
- Having a survivor advocate on staff to support clients emotionally
- The emotional toll of writing and publishing Fired Up
- Why releasing her story meant exposing her family's secret
- Breaking generational trauma for her daughter
- Final advice: start sooner and take action

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👤 Connect with Alreen Haeggquist
Website: alreen.com
Book: Fired Up: Fueling Triumph from Trauma
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alreen-haeggquist/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alreen/

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook
Website: https://torinook.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/torirendanonook/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tori_nook/
X: https://x.com/ToriNook
Email: [email protected]

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🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with her longtime friend Tracey Watts Cirino, a six-time number one international best-selling author, business growth strategist, and founder and CEO of Beyond Common, a coaching and consulting company based in Cleveland, Ohio. Tracey helps business owners, coaches, and creatives turn their voice into cash through her signature Voice to Cash method, refining their messaging and building profitable brands that connect with the right audience.

Tracey grew up in Cleveland, got her cosmetology license at 17, and started working under her mentor Ron before she'd even graduated high school. She began traveling the world teaching advanced cut and color techniques, which eventually led to opening her own salon that she ran for over a decade with a highly trained team.

They discuss selling mixtapes to her uncles at age 9, why she never set out to build a business but felt God pointing her there, believing for 40 years she "wasn't good at grammar" because of a failed ninth-grade English class before writing six bestselling books, the myth that you need 250 no's before a publisher says yes, building a publishing division within Beyond Common that has helped 13 clients become bestsellers, and how the Voice to Cash method shapes how entrepreneurs tell their story.

🎁 Free gift for listeners: DM Tracey and let her know you heard her on the Tori Nook Talk Show to receive her free gift.

🎯 Topics covered:

• Selling mixtapes to her uncles at age 9
• Getting her cosmetology license at 17 and her mentor Ron
• Traveling the world teaching advanced cut and color
• Opening her own salon and running it for over a decade
• Never planning to be an entrepreneur, feeling God-led into it
• The limiting belief from failing ninth-grade English
• The myth of needing 250 no's before a publisher says yes
• Writing six bestselling books and building a publishing division
• Helping 13 clients become bestselling authors
• Creating the Voice to Cash method
• Why your voice is either making or costing you money
• Final advice: show yourself some love

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👤 Connect with Tracey Watts Cirino

Website: tracywattscirino.com

Podcast: Beyond Common Business Secrets

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/traceywattscirino/ 

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

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

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

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

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

⸻

🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Linda Day Harrison, a 35-plus year force in commercial real estate and founder of The Broker List, one of the largest online communities exclusively for CRE professionals. Linda is also co-founder of the annual DNA of CRE Survey with Buildout, a leader behind the CREI Summit, and co-host of the annual Let's Get Social networking event at ICSC Las Vegas.

Linda started in real estate as a receptionist in Chicago, memorizing every tenant, phone number, and voice in her buildings because there was no computer, just her memory and a desk full of Rolodexes. She worked the landlord side for most of her career, keeping buildings full by staying in front of every broker in the city. She lived through the entire evolution of office technology: typewriters without correction ribbon, DOS terminals in the mid-80s with no Windows or Microsoft, broadcast fax machines, and finally email and LinkedIn, which she joined in 2004 when it barely had a million users.

They discuss the old broadcast fax system that listed available space every Monday morning, shared email addresses brokerages used before individual accounts existed, meeting tech developers who called her in as a subject matter expert, launching The Broker List as a beta in 2010, finding her first developer through a LinkedIn group post, growing from 500 early signups to nearly 11,000 today, why top brokers grab their digital footprint early, and her advice that learning to speak well is the most overlooked career skill.

🎯 Topics covered:

• Starting as a receptionist in Chicago commercial real estate
• Memorizing tenants, phone numbers, and voices before computers
• Living through typewriters, DOS terminals, and broadcast fax
• Keeping buildings full by networking with every broker in the market
• Joining LinkedIn in 2004 before it had a million users
• Meeting tech developers who tapped her as a subject matter expert
• Launching The Broker List as a beta in 2010
• Finding her first developer through a LinkedIn group post
• Growing from 500 early signups to nearly 11,000 members
• Why top brokers grab their digital footprint early
• The CREI Summit and Let's Get Social at ICSC Vegas
• Final advice: learn to speak and present yourself well

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👤 Connect with Linda Day Harrison

Website: thebrokerlist.com

LinkedIn: Linda Day Harrison

Instagram: @lindadayharrison 

X: @dayharrison

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

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

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

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

⸻

🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Logan Freeman, managing broker of Midwest CRE Advisors, host of the Kansas City Market Pulse podcast, and a LinkedIn top voice with nearly 40,000 followers. Logan and his team have completed around $450 million in commercial real estate transactions, spanning single-family portfolios, a $50 million fund, 1,500 units across four states, and 600,000 square feet of commercial space. He recently sold what may be the largest single-family home portfolio in the U.S. this year: 503 homes in one deal.

Logan grew up in Jefferson City, Missouri, played collegiate football at Central Missouri, and had a brief stint with the Raiders before being cut in 2013. He paid for college making 265 cold calls a day at a telemarketing company, which taught him to separate rejection of his offer from rejection of himself. After being fired from his last W-2 sales job in 2017, he went all-in on real estate, buying and renovating 280 rental houses in 18 months before moving into brokerage and multifamily, eventually building a 10-person team doing hundreds of millions in deals a year.

They discuss his growth mindset philosophy, David Ricardo's law of economic rent and why location beats vintage, tracking planning and zoning meetings to find the next hot corridor, launching his podcast nine years ago, becoming the "refrigerator magnet" for Kansas City commercial real estate, why attention is the new currency in CRE, and pivoting into powered land and data center deals.

🎯 Topics covered:

• Growing up in Jefferson City and playing college football
• Getting cut from the Raiders in 2013
• Making 265 cold calls a day to pay for college
• Buying and renovating 280 rental houses in 18 months
• Building a 10-person team doing hundreds of millions a year
• David Ricardo's law of economic rent and location vs. vintage
• Tracking infrastructure and zoning to find the next hot market
• Becoming the refrigerator magnet for Kansas City CRE
• Why attention is the new currency in commercial real estate
• Pivoting into powered land and data center deals
• His 5-7 AM faith, silence, and intuition routine

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👤 Connect with Logan Freeman

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

Website: mwcreadvisors.com 

Podcast: Kansas City Market Pulse

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

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

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

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

⸻

🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Jim Lampassi, Senior Vice President of Real Estate and Construction at Academy Sports and Outdoors. Jim has spent over four decades in retail real estate, site selection, construction, and development, holding senior leadership roles at Ross Stores, Barnes & Noble, and Petco before joining Academy, where he oversees strategy behind real estate, construction, store design, and growth for one of the country's leading sporting goods and outdoor retailers.

Jim grew up in Somerville, Massachusetts and studied geography with a concentration in urban planning at Salem State University. After graduating in 1981 into a job market with no urban planning openings, he stayed on at the grocery store he'd worked through college. His break came when he met a stranger, an usher at a friend's wedding, who connected him to the market research department at Grossman's Lumber Company. That conversation launched a 45-year career, starting with mapping out entire markets by hand using census books before the internet existed.

They discuss climbing from analyst to head of location research at Marshall's, growing the chain from 150 to 550 stores over 11 years, bringing Marshalls to Puerto Rico, meeting his wife Lucy at a store managers' conference, jumping to Petco and then Barnes & Noble as its real estate department head, landing an unadvertised SVP role at Ross, and choosing Academy Sports for its growth runway, its refusal to hire based on age, and its all-American, always-game family mission. They also cover navigating tariffs and steel costs, and why networking has been the throughline of his career.

🎯 Topics covered:

• Growing up in Somerville and studying urban planning
• Landing his first real estate job through a wedding usher connection
• Mapping markets by hand with census books at Grossman's
• Rising from analyst to deal maker at Marshall's
• Growing Marshall's from 150 to 550 stores over 11 years
• Bringing Marshalls to Puerto Rico
• Meeting his wife Lucy at a Marshall's conference
• Leading real estate at Petco and then Barnes & Noble
• Landing an SVP role at Ross through networking
• Why he chose Academy Sports over staying at Ross
• Academy's growth runway and refusal to hire based on age
• Final advice: talk to as many people as possible

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👤 Connect with Jim Lampassi

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-lampassi-8668bb4/ 

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

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

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

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

⸻

🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Brittany Megrath, managing broker, principal, and founder of M Square Commercial (MSC), a national commercial real estate brokerage she launched in 2019 in Las Vegas. MSC started out representing retail tenants in Nevada and has since expanded to over 60 markets nationwide, completing transactions in 15 states and transacting over $100 million in real estate value. She holds her CCIM and FMVA certifications and is about to launch an educational platform and ebook.

They discuss learning brokerage the old-school way with a phone book and no script, landing her first major client who carried her through COVID, cold-emailing Karen Hutton at Beth Azor's first Women's Real Estate Investment Summit and landing Modwash as a client, learning land development through daily site tours and 5 AM investment committee calls, expanding into New Mexico and the Northeast, and why perseverance from dance directly translates to surviving cold calls and rejection.

🎯 Topics covered: 

• Graduating high school at 16 through a credit loophole 

• Dancing professionally from 17 to 28, including Donn Arden's Jubilee 

• Finishing her bachelor's degree online while dancing full time 

• Getting her real estate license and boutique retail brokerage 

• Founding M Square Commercial in 2019, the same year as her first child 

• Cold-emailing Karen Hutton and landing Modwash as a client 

• Learning land development through daily site tours 

• 5 AM investment committee calls and expanding markets 

• Why dance discipline translates to brokerage resilience 

• Her upcoming ebook and educational platform launching this fall

👤 Connect with Brittany Megrath

Website: msquarecommercial.com 

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

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

X: https://x.com/Brit_Megrath/

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

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

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

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

⸻

🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Brandon Cobb, real estate developer, investor, entrepreneur, and CEO of HBG Capital Group. Brandon calls himself an accidental entrepreneur. After being fired from his medical device sales job around age 27, he gave himself six months to make money in real estate. 

Eight days before that deadline, he closed his first house flip for a $30,000 profit. Ten years later, he develops and sells land to national homebuilders like D.R. Horton, Lennar, and Ryan Homes, runs two masterminds, hosts the Recession Resistant Real Estate Radio podcast, and is aiming to grow his development company to $100 million in revenue.

Brandon grew up in Memphis, went to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and now lives in Nashville. After that first flip, he scaled to 30 to 50 house flips per year, then discovered new construction was three times more profitable when they rebuilt a fire-damaged property. Instead of chasing 200 landowners a year for 30 vacant lots, they started targeting single parcels large enough for entire subdivisions.

They discuss how he finds large tracts using GIS maps and conversations with planning directors, why joining a mastermind after his first year saved his business, converting debt investors to equity partners overnight to unlock a $20M bank loan, running the Land Development Accelerator and AI Agent Accelerator, and why one AI agent he built does six hours of land due diligence in minutes.

🎯 Topics covered:

• Getting fired from medical device sales at 27
• The six-month ultimatum and $30K first flip
• Scaling house flips to 30-50 per year
• The fire-damaged house that led to new construction
• Getting bought out by D.R. Horton, Lennar, and Ryan Homes
• Finding land through GIS maps and planning directors
• Why masterminds pay for themselves in year one
• Converting debt to equity to unlock a $20M bank loan
• Land Development Accelerator and AI Agent Accelerator
• Building AI agents on his own server with Claude Code
• One AI agent doing 6 hours of due diligence in minutes
• Annual family trips as his why

🔔 Subscribe: youtube.com/@torinook

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👤 Connect with Brandon Cobb

Website: hbgcapital.net

Mastermind: learnlanddevelopment.com

Podcast: Recession Resistant Real Estate Radio

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

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

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

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

⸻

🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Liz Fisher, owner of Tap Into Health, EFT International Accredited Certified Practitioner, clinical hypnotherapist, author, and host of the Tap Into Health podcast. Liz works with clients on body-focused repetitive behaviors, anxiety, panic disorder, emetophobia, performance anxiety, and emotional blocks that traditional therapy has not been able to resolve. Fun fact: Liz and Tori are second cousins.

Liz was a graphic designer for over 20 years before pivoting into healing work. At 8 years old she developed trichotillomania, a body-focused repetitive behavior that caused her to pull out her hair, and by age 20 she was wearing a full wig. After her second son was born in 2014, the pulling came back while she was nursing in the middle of the night. She Googled ways to stop without medication, found EFT on YouTube, taught herself, and didn't pull for three months. When urges returned around Thanksgiving, she found a trainer in Cleveland, took the $3,000 certification course, and during that training cleared her hair pulling for good in just four sessions with another practitioner in Pittsburgh.

They discuss what EFT actually is (acupressure points from Chinese medicine combined with talk therapy), how tapping lowers cortisol and re-engages the prefrontal cortex, the FMRI studies showing brain chemistry change after two minutes, Gary Craig (the Stanford-trained engineer who invented EFT), why Liz became a certified clinical hypnotherapist in 2024, the frozen shoulder client who could lift her arm after one session about a broken heart, and the past-life Civil War session that freed a woman to drive again.

🎯 Topics covered:

• What EFT is and how it works (9 acupressure points)
• Trichotillomania at 8 and wearing a wig by 20
• The 3 AM Google search that introduced her to EFT
• Healing her hair pulling in 4 sessions
• How EFT lowers cortisol and re-engages the prefrontal cortex
• The frozen shoulder client and the broken heart session
• Becoming a clinical hypnotherapist in 2024
• The Civil War past-life session
• Tapping with kids, horses, and animals
• Her book Breaking Free from Trichotillomania with EFT
• Final advice: emotions are temporary, you don't have to stay stuck

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👤 Connect with Liz Fisher

Website: tapintohealth.net 

Instagram: @tapintohealth_eft

Podcast: Tap Into Health

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

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

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

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

⸻

🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Title: The Tori Nook Talk Show | Tyler Bindi: The Art of Outworking Your Competition in Investment Sales

Description: 

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Tyler Bindi, an investment sales broker at Marcus & Millichap in LA who specializes in net lease properties, sale-leasebacks, and portfolio dispositions across the country. Tyler is also the #1 most followed person in commercial real estate on LinkedIn, and he's built his reputation on outworking his competition through deep pricing analysis, strategic marketing, and a relentless client-first approach.

🎯 Topics covered:

• D1 baseball and the broadcasting dream that didn't pan out
• Selling tickets for the Colorado Rockies before COVID
• The country club front desk revelation
• Moving to LA at 24 with 13 months of rent saved
• Making 500 cold calls a week his first year
• First listing: a Dunkin' Donuts sold at list price with one call
• Why he calls himself the garbage man
• How to value triple net: lease term, tenant, location
• The disconnect between seller pricing and current cap rates
• Sale-leaseback transactions explained
• Selling contaminated and deferred maintenance deals
• Why overcommunication wins portfolio dispositions
• Final advice: don't overpromise and underdeliver

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👤 Connect with Tyler Bindi

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-bindi/ 

X: https://x.com/TripleNetTyler 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tylerbindi5/ 

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

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

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

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

⸻

🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.