What happens when the career you spent thirty years building disappears overnight? For Coach Mike Cormier, it was the beginning of the most important pivot of his life.

In this episode, we sit down with our very first male guest on Her Advantage Collective, a former Silicon Valley tech warrior turned certified fitness coach and founder of RunFitMind. Coach Mike gets raw and honest about burnout, the identity crisis that comes with job loss, and the life-altering moment that forced him to finally face his mental health.

In eighteen months he coached one thousand classes at Orange Theory Fitness. He holds a mental health and wellness coaching certification. And he lives by a belief that we haven't stopped thinking about since we hit record — there is no health without mental health.

In this episode we talk about:

• What it really feels like when your identity disappears with your job title
• Why fitness can become an idol — and how to find the balance
• The stigma of mental health in men and why Coach Mike says it out loud anyway
• What "RunFitMind" means and who it's built for
• The one thing Coach Mike wants you to remember if you're in a hard moment right now

Change happens by force or by choice. This episode is for every woman who has ever stood in the middle of a pivot and thought — now what.

Connect with Coach Mike:

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• LinkedIn

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• Substack: The Advantage Writes
• Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with the woman in your life who needs to hear it.

What if the only thing standing between you and the life you actually want is you? In this episode we sit down with Erann Lincoln — director-level executive in the aerospace and aviation industry, mother of two, wife to one, and someone who knew exactly what she wanted and spent years talking herself out of it anyway.

From a breaking point during the pandemic that brought her to her knees, to a deliberate decision to start saying yes, Erann's story is equal parts honest, funny, and deeply relatable. She talks about the structural changes she made to actually make it work, the investments she made in herself that changed everything, and the moment she looked in the mirror and made a decision that every woman in this audience needs to hear.

If you have ever felt like you have more to give, this one is for you.

In this conversation we talk about:

• Why saying yes is a decision, not a feeling — and why no one can make it for you
• The moment during the pandemic that broke everything open and what she did next
• The structural changes that actually made her career possible — and why she doesn't apologize for any of them
• What she said to herself the day she decided she was done feeling guilty for being ambitious
• Why investing in yourself is not taking from your family — it's the whole point

What do you do when life asks you to keep going after losing the people who made it make sense? Wendi Marshall has walked through every mother's worst fear, the loss of her daughter Lauren at 23, and then years later the sudden loss of her husband of 42 years. She didn't just survive. She built a nonprofit, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in Lauren's name, showed up for her grandkids, and somewhere along the way learned to flirt with the world again.

This episode is for anyone who has ever walked through loss and couldn't find the words, and for anyone who has ever loved someone in pain and didn't know how to move toward them without being afraid of breaking them.

In this conversation we talk about:

• Why grief doesn't end and why that's actually okay
• The conscious choice to keep moving when staying in bed is so much easier
• How to show up for someone who is grieving (hint: just do something specific)
• What it means to hold happiness and heartbreak at the same time
• Why Wendi is done with the word "widow" and what she's calling this season instead

Want to connect with Wendi or share how this episode resonated with you? Head to The Advantage Writes, our Substack community. It's the best place to reach us, stay in the conversation, and go deeper between episodes. We read everything.

Her Advantage Collective. Wisdom forged in the hardest seasons of life.