This final episode of Season 1 steps back from the individual conversations and looks at what emerged across the season as a whole.

What became clear is that despite very different backgrounds, guests kept arriving at the same questions. Identity, pressure, belonging, reinvention, and what happens when the version of you that got you here no longer fits your life.

This is not a typical highlights episode. It is not built around the loudest moments or neat takeaways, but the ones that pointed to something deeper.

Across this episode, you will hear reflections from conversations with Marni Wandner, Mo Hiromoto, Christopher Brereton, Nyeesha D. Williams, Brian Recker, Lauren Blitzer-Wright, Jean Gomes, Spenser Liszt, Dr. Chelsey Green, and Moira Carmenate.

Taken together, these conversations form a bigger picture. Not of what success is supposed to look like, but how people actually live with it, question it, and outgrow it.

This episode explores the patterns underneath the stories: identity, pressure, belonging, reinvention, and the slower work of becoming more honest about what matters.

Alongside this podcast, I’ve been writing a book, 12 Steps to Success: Finding Your Purpose, which explores these themes in a more structured way.

What comes up in the conversation

- Identity beyond roles

- Pressure and performance

- Belonging and walking away

- Reinvention as a messy process

- Community and honesty

- Discomfort as the start of clarity

Links & resources

Marni Wandner: https://marniwandner.com

Mo Hiromoto: https://www.mohiromoto.com

Christopher Brereton: https://christopherbrereton.com

Nyeesha D. Williams: https://www.nyeeshawilliams.com

Brian Recker: https://www.brianrecker.com

Lauren Blitzer-Wright: https://www.lonewolvesclub.co/

Jean Gomes: https://londonspeakerbureau.com/speaker-profile/jean-gomes/

Spenser Liszt: https://www.motifplanning.com

Dr. Chelsey Green: https://www.chelseygreen.com

Moira Carmenate: https://www.almoyra.com

12 Steps to Success: Finding Your Purpose

Pre-order: https://amzn.to/4d3pNDN

About the podcast

12 Steps to Success is a podcast about what happens when the path you were on stops making sense.

Hosted by Eric Mackay. Honest conversations about change, identity, and rebuilding without false certainty.

Stay connected

https://twelvestepstosuccess.com

https://instagram.com/twelvestepstosuccess

This conversation with Moira Carmenate is slightly unusual for the podcast, because Moira isn’t just the guest. She’s also my mum.

Recording this episode felt a little like opening a family archive that probably should have stayed closed. Behind the stories, though, is a mindset that shaped much of how I think about resilience and getting back up when things fall apart.

Moira grew up in Scotland under extremely difficult circumstances and lost the only stable figure in her life by the age of seventeen. From there she rebuilt repeatedly. She ran a hotel in her twenties, escaped an abusive marriage with two young children, started again from nothing, and eventually built a successful career in financial services where she became one of the few women in senior leadership roles at the time.

Later in life she reinvented herself again, launching businesses, consulting across Europe, and eventually relocating to Spain where she now runs a company focused on later-life planning and funeral services for expatriates.

This conversation isn’t really about the résumé.

It’s about mindset.

When things go wrong, you have two choices: roll over and play dead, or get up and fight.

What comes up in the conversation

In this episode, we talk about:

• Losing stability at a young age and learning self-reliance early
• Escaping an abusive relationship and starting again with two young children
• Building a career in financial services in a male-dominated industry
• The mindset required to rebuild your life multiple times
• Why failure is information rather than identity
• Reinventing yourself later in life and moving countries
• Working in the funeral and later-life planning industry with empathy and purpose

About Moira Carmenate

Moira Carmenate is an entrepreneur, later-life planning specialist, and founder of Almoyra and White Doves Funeral Planning in Spain.

After building a career in financial services and consulting across Europe, she relocated to Spain where she created a service supporting expatriates with wills, funeral planning, and end-of-life preparation.

She is also the author of In a Mental Fog, a book designed to help people eliminate mental fog, ask themselves honest questions, and take greater control of their lives.

Links & Resources

Moira’s website - https://www.almoyra.com

Expat Lifestyle Centre - https://www.expatlifestyle.es

White Doves Funeral Planning - https://www.whitedovs.es

Moira’s book (In A Mental Fog) - https://amzn.to/4seRWMO

About the podcast

12 Steps to Success is a podcast about what happens when the path you were on stops making sense.

Hosted by Eric Mackay, the show centres on honest conversations with people navigating change, pressure, identity shifts, recovery, and reinvention. These are not success stories or instruction manuals, but real conversations about how people live inside uncertainty and keep moving forward without false certainty.

Stay connected

Website: https://twelvestepstosuccess.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/twelvestepstosuccess

This conversation with Dr. Chelsey Green is about legacy, but not in the polished, career-summary sense of the word. It’s about what we build day to day, what we protect, who we make space for, and what happens when responsibility gets heavy.

Chelsey is a classically trained string player, educator, community builder, and Chair of the Recording Academy. What stayed with me most in this conversation was how openly she talks about the emotional cost of perfectionism, the tension between individuality and belonging, and the way community has repeatedly been the thing that brought her back to herself.

We talk about growing up in Houston in a deeply musical family, the freedom she found in church music, the restrictions of formal classical training, and the way education shaped her desire to become the kind of teacher she never always had. We also get into identity, representation, what it means to walk into rooms as “the inclusion,” and how she thinks about serving 26,000 members through her work with the Academy.

But underneath all of it is a simpler truth: you do not have to fight alone.

What comes up in the conversation

In this episode, we talk about:

• The tension between formal classical training and personal expression
• What community, sisterhood, and chosen support systems make possible
• The emotional cost of perfectionism and always having something to prove
• Depression after achievement, and the community that helped her through it
• Representation, responsibility, and leading as the first Black woman to chair the Recording Academy
• Why legacy is less about status and more about what you make possible for other people

About Dr. Chelsey Green

Dr. Chelsey Green is a Billboard-charting recording artist, educator, and Chair of the Recording Academy’s Board of Trustees, the first Black woman and youngest person ever to hold the role. A Houston native, she is also an Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music and a leading advocate for music education, access, and equity.

As bandleader of Chelsey Green and The Green Project, she blends classical training with jazz, R&B, soul, and funk, and has performed with artists including Stevie Wonder, Lizzo, Ledisi, Maxwell, and Kirk Franklin.

Website: www.chelseygreen.com

Instagram: @drchelseygreen

About the podcast

12 Steps to Success is a podcast about what happens when the path you were on stops making sense.

Hosted by Eric Mackay, the show centres on honest conversations with people navigating change, pressure, identity shifts, recovery, and redefinition. These are not success stories or instruction manuals, but real conversations about how people live inside uncertainty and keep moving without false certainty.

Website: https://twelvestepstosuccess.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/twelvestepstosuccess