Learning to move with intention

- May 10, 2025

Enthusiasm is one of my trademarks. I think of it as my natural attribute, just as red soles belong to Christian Louboutin. The perks of such a temperament at this stage in my career include being driven to positive urgency, curiosity and life-long learning and being socially connected. Being positive and happy are also some nice side effects. This tends to make me a generally engaging and creative communicator when speaking and presenting.

How about the dark side, you may wonder? To be one who sees the glass half full has its downfalls. To always see potential where others don't can be a source of assorted frustrations. But, but, but… Where there lies potential, lies… possibility.

Quick recap: In January, I had an epiphany. My new business name, its vision, all collided into a beautiful composite. February rolled around, and all excited, I went on to commission a new logo and wordmark for Le Trente. I got myself a new domain name (it wasn’t free, sadly!), moved things around so I could start fresh in March. A perfect — if exhausting — Springtime turnaround.

I threw myself into the direction I could see the new business taking me.

To pivot the way I did, is akin to operating a sharp turn with one of those big tankers on international waters. A dangerous manoeuvre? Maybe. But the timing felt right. I was answering not just an opportunity but a necessity. I needed to make that sharp move from my fashionable past. The disparate threads of my life’s interests and passions were finally woven together into not only a clear pattern, but a compelling tapestry.

Did I know my destination? Yes and no.

Another attribute of mine is vision. Projecting into the future also feels like second nature: “way-seeing”, we could call it. I moved fast towards my goal because I felt the urgency of the shift. Now, I want to share where I find myself and how I am slowing down. There is this beautiful outline of a project on the horizon, I don’t want to mess this up. Now is the time to use all my tips and tricks to craft what Seth Godin likes to call ‘an elegant strategy’, a roadmap to build the project of my dreams. It’s wayfinding time.

Borrowing from metaphors from my guide ​Your Story, Your Map​: “When embracing the metaphor of wayfinding, I find an invitation to apply [...] principles of mindful, purposeful awareness to our lives:

- I am pausing to observe the “landscape” of my experience.

- Learning to understand where I’ve been.

- Anchoring myself in the present so I can chart the right course.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been exploring the potential of Le Trente, metaphorical and otherwise. I sat with friends for dinner and asked for their thoughts. They only know the shape of the salons I host in Geneva. The conversation was enriching in more ways than one, but also rang hollow, as these in-person gatherings are only a sliver of what I plan to offer.

This highlighted an issue, common to my enthusiastic, far-envisioning mind: I see where I want to go, and vroom, move at full speed, without the map in my hand. How will I get to where I want without a plan? You guessed it. Time to firm up the vision in a way that, at the very least, offers clarity to friends, collaborators and other supporters.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been “designing at the whiteboard” which is a term I heard coined by coach Tara Mohr. It’s the action of brainstorming, business building or a creative process pursued in isolation.

The problem with “designing at the whiteboard” is obvious from the outside: my plan doesn't actually interact with reality or with people. Since it’s just me, putting all this effort in without involving anyone, the exercise can turn into procrastination, an endless pursuit of looking better ideas, better words, and burying myself into a pit of research. It culminates in a sense of “I can't share this”, it's not ready, I need to 'do more'. The project stalls. That's a surefire way to keep myself stuck in an endless loop of perfectionism. It's also a frequent side-effect of enthusiasm meets solopreneur habits.

Movement however is what I'm seeking. Lucky for me, I've recently had the pleasure of interviewing ​Joanna Bloor​, author of ​Tales of Potential, The Cinderella Story You Haven't Heard​, and inventor of ‘potentialism’.

She helped me understand one of the mechanics at play when we are building something new and we don’t have the full shape of it in view just yet. This is what she offered in a nutshell:

“Where is the opportunity? Where can we go? How do we future path on a broader sense? [...] Look, we have to be able to unpack and explore the potential, things we don’t understand yet and play with them so that we can find the potential, co-create the future.”

Joanna’s superpower is not just to help us explore the possibilities, but to help explain, find the words so we can share a complex, conceptual project to somebody who doesn’t see what we see.

For me, the juiciness of what she offers is to understand that there's a beautiful opportunity right in front of me. Indeed, there is a perception gap between the vision in my mind and what another person will hear.

Between these two points, there lies a container of potential. Instead of seeking reinforcement for my ideas (oh Anne, that’s brilliant!), however pleasant that may be, I've come to embrace the space of potential, asking my friends:

How is this landing for you?

What do you understand?

What is emergent for you when I share this idea?

Their responses come out laden with their own mind-map of thoughts, their inner resonance. I’m no longer solo at the whiteboard, Le Trente has a collective supporting its development. Why would I want to build this alone anyway? Well, because of exactly what Joanna points to: it’s hard to work with others when we don’t know how to explain the potential of a project.

This echoed the words of the entrepreneur and founder of ​Sublime.App​, ​Sari Azout​ who I interviewed earlier this year and who shared her experience of building her startup:

“So much of the my journey with Sublime and with putting new ideas out into the world has been, especially before they’re ready for kind of mass adoption, understanding that it takes time for ideas to settle into the zeitgeist, that you have to often repeat something for five, six, seven years before people truly internalise it.

And that’s also become more true today: everyone is drowning in information. There are so many incredible ideas that are just buried. They haven’t seen the light of day and they're just waiting for that big unlock. I guess I have so much patience. And it comes from this truth: I know this is what I want to be doing for the next decade plus of my life. So, I'm less in a rush because I kind of trust that this will unfold in its own time. Of course, there’s the pressure of startups and payroll and people and whatnot, but I just have so much more conviction. And I think I have a willingness to be misunderstood for longer periods than I think I ever have."

As someone who holds a vision of something that doesn’t exist yet in the world, I’m going to need all the help I can get to shape up this future of possibilities I seek to build. Including help finding the words to get there. Words are essential to help us build what we don't see.

Meanwhile, grateful for these two smart women, I’m learning to be patient, taking the time to explore and embracing my willingness to be misunderstood for longer.

While in the past, I would have certainly tried to build this plan on my own, I’d like to say I've finally learned my lesson: I’m taking stock of where I’ve been (and where I don’t want to go back to) and I'm knocking on virtual doors, and some physical ones, asking for help. That’s how motivated I am!

I’m learning to work 'on the business' vs 'in the business', which means that some days (almost weeks), I dedicate to research and business planning, strategy and fun things like creating feedback forms, etc. Don’t make fun, at times it’s very juicy and engaging, like the day I stumbled upon the terms: “library of human experience” as well as “social wellness club” and “learning studio”.

While I pour my energy into the potential and the vision, I can’t operate as I was originally hoping to. Which means I haven't got the bandwidth to run another several-week workshop on Story of You, for example, my signature project on how to share your value(s) with the world.

For the next two months, I will only be taking on select one-on-one client projects, whether for coaching and storytelling purposes. It’s stressing me out in more ways than one because I’d love to be 'doing it all' (and also earning the money that goes with it). However, because I am building something brand new, I need to allow myself to slow down, instead of speeding up, to honour the richness of the project.

Here are some of the ideas I'm flushing out for Le Trente, some of which could be available as of June or July:

An updated pitch (which I need to learn by heart by tonight): Have you noticed how difficult it’s become to feel genuinely connected — to ourselves and to others? I help people bridge that gap. At Le Trente, I create environments where purpose-driven individuals and brands rediscover their authentic voice and potential. Drawing on my journey from luxury brand executive to mindfulness teacher and community builder, I design experiences that transform how people relate to themselves and others. My salons and workshops aren't just about networking or learning — they're about creating the conditions where your inner light can shine brightly enough to recognise and connect with the light in others. When that happens, the possibilities for collaboration and growth become limitless.

A new podcast: The METTA Inter-VIEWS, a spin on the Mettā View, where I will be

A spin on the Mettā View, where I will be interviewing brilliant friends and collaborators who will join me in offering programmes, masterclasses, and workshops for Le Trente.

In discussing how we could collaborate, I realised that I wanted you to discover these wonderful humans so you could see the goodness and potential that I see, falling in love with them a little, like I did. And what better way for you to hear their stories than via a podcast!

Instead of sticking to a simple interview format, we are going to be meeting and talking around a question. The process of mindful inquiry is at the heart of the work I want to invite you to discover with Le Trente. As soon as I had formulated the idea of 'talking to my brilliant friends', I felt a rush throughout my body, a sparkling, gleeful energy.

One of said brilliant friends, ​Jenny Scott,​ who writes a beautiful newsletter on Substack called ​Poetry Buds​, deepened the context as she shared resonant thoughts from a recent essay she'd written about Rumi and the importance of intellectual friendships.

"For Rumi, friendship is both the container for spiritual growth and spiritual experience--and it's a metaphor for spiritual growth and spiritual experience.

Because he had an actual friendship [with Shams of Tabriz] that was a container that turned him from a scholar into a mystic.

And then for the rest of his life that metaphor (for the type of union you can experience in friendship) became a metaphor for spiritual union with the divine, with life, with a feeling of aliveness, with awe...”

This places the bar pretty high, I know, quoting Rumi and nodding to one of my favourite books (​My Brilliant Friend​, by Elena Ferrante). It's daring and exciting, and I can't wait for you to listen in on our conversations. Let's see what happens!

MASTERCLASSES: Live masterclasses delivered by brilliant friends and collaborators across a spectrum of enriching topics—from creative ateliers and embodied mindfulness practices to brand and personal storytelling, all underpinned by purpose-driven approaches to work and life. These gatherings will invite both inspiration and deep reflection, with recordings becoming part of our digital resource library. Alongside this, I am building a physical library of books on these same themes (and much more), creating opportunities to deepen your connection with these topics through both live experiences and thoughtful reading.

TALKING CIRCLES: what came up in some of my conversations is that we want to hear from each other more. Many of the salon attendees would like to feel more connected to each other, for example. And there is an appetite to hear each other’s stories. Now not everyone is a natural born storyteller. So we may have communal story-building workshops to help bring the stories to life, before signing up to share.

The hidden gem behind this is that this promotes the exploration of inner narratives. The goal is to bring some deep reflections in these circles, so it’s not just about 'telling the story as it is' but exploring our own stories, revisiting them, exploring new lenses, before sharing them.

A COMMUNITY ON CIRCLE: this is where I will invite you to gather online, more on this in the coming weeks.

ALSO IN THE WORKS: Mission Mindfulness (a year-long program), Brand Communication masterclasses, Mindful Communication workshops… and more!

IN CONCLUSION

This journey of building a new business, complete with a business model, is not for the faint-hearted, but it’s also brilliantly energising. Well it is to me! Maybe to you it sounds like a nightmare. 😉

So while the Story of You workshops are temporarily paused as I build out this broader vision, the essence of what makes that work meaningful — authentic communication, mindful presence and purposeful connection — remains at the heart of everything Le Trente is becoming.

Sometimes, slowing down is what we need to ultimately move forward with greater clarity and impact. I’m learning to balance my natural enthusiasm with the patience that vision-building requires. I hope you’ll join me on this journey. Great things are coming, so stick with me!