Most professionals believe their work should speak for itself until they realize opportunity favors those who are understood, not just competent. In a grounded, candid conversation, Shauna Van Mourik explores why personal branding is no longer about self-promotion, but about clarity, connection, and translating internal value into external opportunity. Together, the discussion reframes personal brand as a deeply human practice rooted in values rather than vanity, offering leaders a realistic path to visibility that feels aligned, sustainable, and true to who they already are.

Key Takeaways:

1. When Competence Stops Converting – Understand why expertise alone no longer guarantees recognition, advancement, or trust.
2. Internal Value vs External Signaling – Learn how unseen impact creates frustration and how to bridge that gap with clarity.
3. Why Soft Skills Are Performance Skills Now – Discover why human connection has become a differentiator, not a bonus.
4. Personal Branding Without Self-Promotion – See how visibility can be built without chest-beating or burnout.
5. The Reality of Being Seen at Work – Explore why even high-level leaders can remain invisible inside large organizations.
6. Talking About What Matters – Notice how sharing what’s already alive inside you creates momentum and resonance.

About the Guest:

Shauna Van Mourik is a marketing strategist, speaker, and host of Marketing Rebels, a podcast with 150+ episodes challenging outdated marketing norms for coaches and therapists. A #1 international bestselling author and featured expert on 22+ stages and podcasts, she’s helped 100+ women service-based entrepreneurs clarify their messaging, streamline their marketing, and grow businesses that actually feel good to run. Shauna blends marketing psychology, neuroscience, and bold creativity to help clients attract aligned clients, charge their worth, and build brands that feel like home.

Website: https://www.shaunaleigh.com

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@ShaunaLeighVM

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sla.marketingconfidence

Instagram: www.instagram.com/sla.marketingconfidence

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunavanmourik-slamarketingconfidence/

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SLAMarketingConfidence

Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/PrettyChicken/

About Amy:

Amy Lynn Durham, known by her clients as the Corporate Mystic, is the founder of the Executive Coaching Firm, Create Magic At Work®, where they help leaders build workplaces rooted in creativity, collaboration, and fulfillment. A former corporate executive turned Executive Coach, Amy blends...

In this trailer, Aaron Tabacco introduces the heart of the show and the two forces that shape our human experience. The circles are the patterns, rituals, relationships, and rhythms we move through every day. The edges are the moments of choice, the boundaries we meet or create, and the thresholds where growth quietly begins.

This podcast is a space for reflection, attention, and connection. A place to notice what often goes unseen and to listen inward during moments of transition. Circles | Edges is not about fixing or forcing change. It is about awareness, presence, and understanding who we are becoming.

Intro music "Unraveling the Night" composed by Miriam Milewska provided under license through Pond5

Something breaks when devotion outpaces reciprocity, and many high-performing women do not realize the cost until the collapse is unavoidable. In this conversation, Alexandra Norris traces her journey from decades of HR leadership into a profound reckoning shaped by codependence, ambition, and identity loss. Together with Amy, she explores how care becomes self-erasure, why boundaries fail where standards succeed, and what emerges when women transition from relentless responsibility into the clarity and authority of crone wisdom. The result is an honest examination of leadership, power, fairness, and the quiet transformation that occurs when women stop managing outcomes and start standing in truth.

Key Takeaways:

1. When Success Becomes Self-Abandonment – Understand how high achievement can quietly evolve into emotional and financial overextension.
2. The Hidden Mechanics of Codependence – Learn how belief, loyalty, and knowledge can become traps rather than strengths.
3. Why Boundaries Fail and Standards Hold – Discover a reframing that restores personal agency without control or blame.
4. Fairness Versus Justice in Relationships – Gain a new lens for evaluating partnerships without collapsing into moral absolutes.
5. The Crone as a Leadership Archetype – See how post-caretaking wisdom offers steadiness, truth, and cultural repair.
6. Strategic Culture as Human Alignment – Explore how belief systems, not strategy decks, determine execution and trust.

About the Guest:

Alexandra Norris has spent 30 years building a successful HR leadership to strategic culture consultant career when everything crashed around her. Now she shares her expertise and lessons learned to (1) help executives reach $10m, $40m, and $100m ARR milestones, (2) help Gen Zers define and navigate their careers in corporate, and (3) help women transition from Mother to Crone.

www.linkedin.com/in/alexandraknorris

https://www.youtube.com/@StrategicCulturePartners-x3

www.strategicculturepartners.com

https://career-navigation-mastery-studio.mn.co/

About Amy:

Amy Lynn Durham, known by her clients as the Corporate Mystic, is the founder of the Executive Coaching Firm, Create Magic At Work®, where they help leaders build workplaces rooted in creativity, collaboration, and fulfillment. A former corporate executive turned Executive Coach, Amy blends practical leadership strategies with spiritual intelligence to unlock human potential at work.

She’s a certified Executive Coach through UC Berkeley & the International Coaching Federation (ICF) In addition, Amy holds coaching certifications in Spiritual Intelligence (SQ21), the Edgewalker Profile, and the Archetypes of Change . In addition to being the host of the Create Magic At Work® podcast, Amy is the author of Create Magic At Work®, Creating Career Magic: A Daily Prompt Journal and the founder of Magic Thread Media™. Through her work, she inspires intentional leadership for thriving...

Finding Treasures in the Trash has always lived between what we hide and what saves us, and this moment marks its most honest turning point yet. Cari Jacobs-Crovetto shares why the show is stepping out on its own and moving to the newly formed Magic Thread Media, a network devoted to weaving conscious voices into business, creativity, and spiritual life. As she reflects on the early episodes, Cari names the deeper work that has quietly emerged: inner truth work. She explores how anxiety, shadow, and disowned parts of ourselves become survival strategies, why truth often freezes in time, and how unexamined insight can slip into self-justification and managed presence.

This episode grounds the future of the Finding Treasures in the Trash podcast in coherence and congruence, where nothing essential is pushed away and nothing is performed. This evolution invites you into a deeper relationship with yourself, where the treasure is found only by staying with what once felt unbearable.

Key Takeaways:

1. Truth Can’t Be Reached Through Performance – Learn why looking good, being right, and staying safe block real self-truth.
2. Shadow Is Adapted Truth – See how shadow reflects parts of you that learned to survive, not parts that are broken.
3. Why Truth Freezes in Time – Understand how safety, shame, and belonging force parts of us underground.
4. When Insight Turns Performative – Learn how values and spirituality lose depth when disowned parts stay hidden.
5. Coherence and Congruence – Discover the difference between looking aligned and actually being whole.
6. Why Trust Frays in Relationships – See how self-betrayal quietly erodes trust long before words do.

About Cari:

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto is a coach, secular meditation teacher, and somatic healing practitioner who blends decades of senior corporate leadership with deep therapeutic training to support meaningful personal and professional growth. After a successful career spanning global brands, media networks, consulting, and multiple Bay Area startups, she now works full-time with business leaders and individuals navigating transition, anxiety, disconnection, and the desire for deeper fulfillment. Cari offers one-on-one and relationship coaching, group work, retreats, organizational alignment, conflict resolution, and strategic future-visioning, helping clients cultivate clarity, resilience, and more conscious ways of leading and living.

https://www.bravedirections.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carisf/

https://www.instagram.com/cari_jacobs_sf

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews...

Are you a corporate leader, HR exec or CEO that wants to create healthy workplaces? Then this podcast is for you!

Create Magic At Work™ is on a mission to equip senior leaders with tools they need to be a true servant leader and have a deep understanding of what that means. Improve employee engagement, retain top talent, transform workplace culture to have less stress and drama! Your host: Amy Lynn Durham is the Founder of Create Magic At Work™ and a Spiritual Intelligence Coach.

Amy has spent years in the corporate world successfully managing hundreds of employees for private and publicly traded companies. Amy designed Create Magic At Work™ to bring a variety of services and strategies to aid in supporting healthy leaders & workplaces through:

1. Private Coaching - 3 month 1:1 Spiritual Intelligence Experiences
2. Speaking Internationally about Ways to Support & Create Healthy Workplace Cultures
3. Experiential Workshops & Keynotes

In her spare time, you can find her spending time with her Cavapoo Mr. Bingley, journaling, doing yoga or trying to master stand up paddle boarding with her boyfriend.

www.createmagicatwork.net

https://www.linkedin.com/in/amylynndurham/

Why high achievers keep chasing and still feel unsatisfied often has little to do with effort and everything to do with where attention is placed. In this conversation, Amy and Harper A. Bailey unpack how driven people become conditioned to equate movement with progress and achievement with worth, slowly losing connection to their internal signals along the way. They explore how performance mode, urgency, and the need to prove keep leaders stuck in a cycle of doing more while feeling less fulfilled. Rather than offering another strategy to optimize output, the discussion points inward, revealing how awareness, presence, and listening to the body restore clarity and direction. When achievement stops being the primary compass, work becomes more intentional, decisions feel steadier, and satisfaction stops living somewhere in the future.

Key Highlights

1. Why high achievers confuse constant movement with real progress - See how staying busy can mask a deeper lack of clarity and direction.
2. How performance mode quietly replaces self-trust - Understand why proving your value externally makes it harder to hear what you actually need.
3. Why achievement stops delivering satisfaction over time - Learn how success can lose its impact when worth becomes tied to outcomes.
4. How ignoring the body leads to misaligned decisions - Discover why physical signals often reveal burnout and misdirection before the mind does.
5. What keeps driven people stuck in urgency and pressure - Explore how the need to stay ahead prevents reflection and recalibration.
6. What shifts when clarity replaces chasing - Notice how slowing down creates steadier decisions, cleaner boundaries, and more grounded leadership.

About the Guest:

Harper A. Bailey is the pen name of Tiosha Bailey, a Chicago native, public health leader, and powerful storyteller who challenges the status quo. She was the first Black woman to lead a prominent national women's healthcare nonprofit, where she prioritized health equity and amplified the voices of underserved communities.

Her first book, It Was Her: A Memoir—featuring a foreword by renowned motivational speaker Lisa Nichols—invites readers into a deeply personal story shaped by loss, resilience, and transformation. Through honest and compelling storytelling, Harper explores identity, healing, and the

courage it takes to reclaim your narrative.

As a speaker, Harper brings clarity, depth, and humor to conversations about leadership, purpose, and the lived experiences of Black women. She connects with audiences through truth-telling and a passion for

Creating spaces where people feel seen, heard, and empowered.

Grab a copy of Harper's book - It Was Her

www.harperabailey.com

https://www.instagram.com/harper_abailey/

https://www.facebook.com/harperabailey

About Amy:

Amy Lynn Durham, known by her clients as the Corporate Mystic, is the founder of the Executive Coaching Firm,

Something shifts when joy stops being a side effect of success and becomes a conscious way of living and leading. In this episode, Amy explores the idea of Exponential Joy with Kristin Joy Ekkens, founder of Exponential Joy™ movement, and how choosing joy on purpose can transform the way we work, communicate, and show up in our lives. Together, they unpack how joy is not about bypassing difficulty, but about developing the awareness, presence, and courage to meet life honestly without losing yourself in the process. Kristin shares how exponential joy grows through small, intentional choices that reconnect you to your voice, your body, and your truth, even in high-pressure environments. This conversation invites you to rethink productivity, success, and leadership through a more human lens, where joy becomes a renewable resource that deepens connection, expands impact, and creates work that feels aligned instead of draining.

Key Takeaways:

1. Why Exponential Joy Is a Practice, Not a Personality Trait – Understand how joy grows through intentional choices rather than circumstances or temperament.
2. How Joy Changes the Way You Show Up at Work – Learn how choosing joy affects presence, communication, and how others experience you.
3. The Difference Between Performing and Living in Joy – See how chasing approval or productivity blocks joy and creates quiet exhaustion.
4. How Awareness Creates Space for Joy Under Pressure – Discover why noticing your internal state is the doorway to sustainable joy, even in demanding environments.
5. Why Joy Expands Impact Instead of Diminishing It – Learn how grounded joy strengthens leadership, trust, and influence rather than making work feel less serious.
6. Returning to Your Natural State of Joy – Understand how reconnecting to your voice, body, and truth allows joy to grow exponentially over time.

About the Guest:

Kristin Joy Ekkens is the visionary founder of the Exponential Joy™ movement and creator of the Joy Operating System (JOYOS™)—a blueprint for conscious leadership, wellbeing, and human flourishing. A TEDx speaker, executive coach, and social entrepreneur, she blends emotional and connectional intelligence, well-tech, and ancient wisdom to help leaders and creators upgrade their inner operating systems. After overcoming severe burnout and autoimmune illness, Kristin developed the EPIC Joy Codes™—Energy, Purpose, Intention, and Connection—to help others transform stress into vitality and purpose into joy. Her mission: to rewire humanity for exponential joy.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinjoyekkens

https://exj.global/joyos-accelerator/

About Amy:

Amy Lynn Durham, known by her clients as the Corporate Mystic, is the founder of the Executive Coaching Firm, Create Magic At Work®, where they help leaders build workplaces rooted in creativity, collaboration, and fulfillment. A former corporate executive turned Executive Coach, Amy blends practical leadership strategies with spiritual intelligence to unlock human potential at work.

She’s a certified Executive Coach through UC Berkeley & the International Coaching Federation (ICF) In addition, Amy holds coaching certifications in Spiritual Intelligence (SQ21), the Edgewalker...