The Breakout – Unleashing Personal Growth

Join us for a bonus episode this month, as we share Keri and Kelly's appearance on Notes on Resilience, hosted by Manya Chylinski!

What if the secret to effective leadership wasn't having all the answers, but rather creating space for genuine human connection? In this enlightening conversation with Keri Ohlrich and Kelly Guenther, co-founders of the Abbracci Group, we explore the transformative power of compassion in the workplace.

The dialogue begins with a fundamental truth: people want to feel cared for, regardless of whether they're at home or at work. Despite...

Trystan Reese is a dad to three great kids, he has a loving partner, and a fulfilling career. It's a beautiful, somewhat typical life. But as a transgender man, there's nothing typical about how he got here.

How he grew his family – from an unexpected adoption, to his very public trans pregnancy – is a huge part of how Trystan does his LGBTQ+ advocacy work. And in this episode, we hear Trystan’s family story, how he pushes past judgment to tell his story, and why, even with the war on DE&I, he thinks there’s still hope...

Join us for a bonus episode this month, as we share Keri and Kelly's appearance on Season of Stuck, hosted by Deanna deBara!

Summary

In this episode of Season of Stuck, Deanna sits down with Kelly Guenther and Dr. Keri Ohlrich, co-hosts of The Breakout, authors of Whatever the Hell You Want, and co-founders of the Abbracci Group. They'll discuss what it means to get unstuck and how to navigate the fear, resistance, and challenges that come with change. From personal experiences to professional insights, this episode is packed with actionable advice...

I had a budding career as an attorney. I was making more money than I knew how to spend. I was living in the Upper East Side. Everything looked promising.

On paper, it seemed like Justin Maffett had achieved the life he'd always wanted, but instead of enjoying it, he felt trapped in a career that was making him miserable. 

Then in 2020, COVID lockdowns forced Justin into a state of physical and emotional isolation, and that simmering resentment he felt towards his work turned into a mental health crisis - followed by arrests and f...

Join us for a bonus episode this month, as we share Keri and Kelly's appearance on Hotter Than Ever, with Erin Keating!

Summary

Is entrepreneurship truly a solo journey, or would you rather start a business with a friend? For Dr. Keri Ohlrich and Kelly Guenther, co-founders of the leadership and HR consultancy the Abbracci Group and co-hosts of “The Breakout” podcast, the answer is clear: collaboration is key. Together, they’re on a mission to help women and entrepreneurs navigate both professional and personal changes, big and small. Their book, “Whatever the Hell...

“I often say that creativity is rooted in refusal. That you refuse to accept that the world as it is, is just fine as it is, because  you recognize that the world as it is can be altered”. 

Dr. Tasha Golden wants everyone to see the extraordinary power in creativity. Tasha is a behavioral scientist, and a leading expert in how creativity drives transformative change. And she should know. 

Because before Tasha became a scientist, she was a successful singer and songwriter touring the world, until a shattering case of burnout forced her to chang...

“I really fought against this identity of being a patient - being someone who's just expected to wither away and to rely on doctors”.  

When Kim Rahir was hit with a life-altering diagnosis, she knew she needed to take control. After a terrifying episode of paralysis, she learned that she had Multiple Sclerosis - and her life changed dramatically. But, facing frightening changes in her body, and lifelong drug treatments,  Kim’s instinct was to push back on what her doctors were telling her. 

With a burning drive to be able to rely on her bod...

“You can't think your way out of a body problem…You have to address what's happening in the body and the brain before you can actually take those steps forward”. Deanna DeBara knows all about feeling “stuck”.  And, if you're a human navigating life right now, you probably do too. Being stuck is that odd sense of not wanting to stay where you are, but not being able to – or knowing how to – move forward. It’s something that many of us think about as being an individual feeling, but Deanna wants us to know that it’s actually a foundational huma...

“While I was in the hospital…people started sending flowers and the biggest bouquet of flowers was from my work. And that is a metaphor for how my life was going”. The week before she turned 50, Erin Keating ended up in the hospital, and nearly died from COVID. That’s when a lot of things in her life became crystal clear. 

At the time, Erin was the picture of success – but she was also telling herself a lot of lies. It took a dire illness and a mid-life reckoning to launch a complete life reinvention. And she noticed...

“It's very easy to say Gen Z’s and millennials are demanding, they're needy, but if you really look at the core of what they want, they're basic human needs that we all want.”

There's a generational divide in the work place that Madeline Miller wants to change. Madeline is a career coach who focuses specifically on Gen Z and millennial clients, who she says are entering the workforce with an entirely novel set of challenges.

Madeline’s clients are in their twenties, and grew up in the age of climate change, sweeping tech innovations, and bein...

“We can look at fertility, we can look at cognition, memory, the nervous system, sleep, really there’s not a single system of the body that yoga and meditation don’t have have evidence to support for helping you function.” Ann Swanson has written the book on the science of yoga. Literally. After dealing with chronic pain and anxiety throughout her life, Ann tried yoga and meditation. Reluctant at first, once she started seeing real improvements, she went all in - and today, Ann’s published two books that map out the hard evidence on the profound impacts these practices...

Happy New Year everyone! As you contemplate your resolutions for 2025, sit back and listen to Celeste Headlee's pitch for... Doing Nothing. It's a replay of one of our favorite episodes of 2024, and we're hoping it helps you kick off the new year on the right foot. Enjoy.

“People who overwork - more than 55 hours a week - which is most Americans, will die younger. Not that it's correlated with early death. It causes it. This is serious”.

Celeste Headlee wants to start a revolution.

In her new book Do Nothing: How to Break Away...

The festive season has arrived, life is even busier than usual, and there’s still so much to do! That’s why today on The Breakout, we’re going with something  simple: sending our best wishes, and sharing a few teasers for what you can look forward to in the new year.

Join us today for a quick look at 2024, and a glimpse ahead to 2025. And as always, a big thank you to our listeners for making this year one of our best yet! We can’t wait to connect with you again in January for more incr...

Ryan Murphy is a nine-time Olympic medal-winning swimmer, but it hasn't all been podium glory. At this summer's Paris Games, Ryan missed qualifying for the men's 200 meter backstroke by one tenth of a second. And that was after he had just won bronze in the 100 meter. It's these extraordinary swings between triumph and disappointment that Ryan is so brilliant at managing. Through it all, he's learned to roll with the lows just as easily as he celebrates the highs.

There are few endeavours that can match the intense 24-7, 365 day per year commitment and pressure of being...

At 33 years old, Tatiana Miller suddenly lost feeling and movement in her legs, and was lying in a hospital bed. “I had four orthopedic surgeons tell me, ‘this is going to be your new normal’, and at that moment, I remember thinking, no, absolutely not. You're wrong”.
 When it comes to her health, accepting the status quo has never been in the cards for Tatiana.

As a teen, she saw multiple doctors to find help for her autoimmune disease and chronic pain. For years, she struggled to find answers, studying holistic medicine and practicing yoga, but her body...

Today, instead of our usual episode, we're excited to share a podcast we think you'll love: Say More with Tulaine Montgomery. Tulaine is an entrepreneur, activist, and CEO of the venture philanthropy firm New Profit. In her show, she speaks with people who are deeply committed to making the world a better place, while also taking care of themselves and supporting their communities.

In this episode, Tulaine interviews Rachel Cargle, an activist, best-selling author, and founder of The Loveland Foundation. Together, they explore how self-study can help us uncover our true selves and empower us to...

With this crucial election right around the corner, everyone at The Breakout agreed it’s a great time to re-share this interview with Maximina Juson, the director of the documentary, One Person, One Vote?

This is a beautiful film that examines America’s Electoral College Voting System, and who it really represents. The movie premiered  in September on PBS and it's streaming now on the PBS app. Follow @1person1votedoc on IG, FB & TikTok to stay updated. To host or attend an in person screening visit onepersononevote.co. And of course, check out our interview with the amazi...

The day has finally come! Friends…our book is officially launched! Join us on today’s episode as we celebrate the book, vacillate from excitement to nausea, and look back on the incredible guests on The Breakout who inspired it all.

One of our amazing guests once said, “all these rules that have been taught to us? They were not bargained for collectively. We did not actually agree to them”.  She was actually talking about monogamy, but for us, that sentiment applies universally to every expectation we live by. It’s also a sentiment that serves as the startin...

Enter our Giveaway! Get in on it before it’s gone!
Keri and Kelly’s new book, Whatever the Hell you Want: An Escape Plan to Break Out of Life’s Little Boxes and Live Free from Expectations is coming out October 8th, but you can pre-order it NOW! And there are bonuses for you if you do! Our fabulous podcast listeners can win the deluxe new AirPods Max headphones.

Here's how to enter:
1. Pre-order the book on Amazon at this link between August 14th and October 8.
2. Post a podcast review on your favorite listen...

ENTER OUR GIVEAWAY!

Keri and Kelly’s new book, Whatever the Hell you Want: An Escape Plan to Break Out of Life’s Little Boxes and Live Free from Expectations is launching October 8th, but you can pre-order it NOW! And you could win if you do! A set of deluxe new AirPods Max headphones are up for grabs.

Here's how to enter:
1. Pre-order the book on Amazon at this link by October 8.
2. Post a podcast review on your favorite listening app
3. Post your book receipt on Facebook or Instagram using the hash...

GIVEAWAY ALERT!!
Keri and Kelly’s new book, Whatever the Hell you Want: An Escape Plan to Break Out of Life’s Little Boxes and Live Free from Expectations is coming out October 8th, but you can pre-order it NOW! And there are bonuses for you if you do! Our fabulous podcast listeners can win the deluxe new AirPods Max headphones.

Here's how to enter:
1 Pre-order the book on Amazon at this link between August 14th and October 8.
2 Post a podcast review on your favorite listening app
3 Post your book receipt on Facebook or I...

“People who overwork - more than 55 hours a week - which is most Americans, will die younger. Not that it's correlated with early death. It causes it. This is serious”.

Celeste Headlee wants to start a revolution.

In her new book Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving, she’s asking out loud the question we’ve likely all been wondering: Why are we so obsessed with productivity and efficiency? Even when it's making us miserable?

Celeste is an award-winning author and broadcast journalist with NPR and PBS. She’s also a p...

“It was easy for me to say to people ‘your stories are valuable’ but when I would turn that lens on myself, I was tongue-tied and embarrassed.” As the founder of Wonderwell Press, a non-fiction publishing company, Maggie Langrick has been a champion of writers for years; in fact she was a huge influence in the development of Keri and Kelly’s upcoming book, Whatever the Hell You Want (coming in October!). 

But while Maggie was helping everyone else find their voice, she was actively repressing her own, because, as she tells us, she felt like it was “weird…...

“I think everybody has limitless potential to create whatever they want”.  That’s the core idea that coach and best-selling author, Scott Allan lives by. Scott's made it his mission to "help people create the life they want to own".  How does he do that exactly? With the extraordinary series of self-help books he's written, and by sharing his life story.

In the late 90’s, Scott was working as an electrical engineer on the west coast of Canada when he decided to turn everything upside down. “I've got to do something with this life”, he decided, “I didn't come this...

“You don't have to let your past define you. You can change in a heartbeat”. Dr. Cindy Starke is a firm believer that it’s never too late to begin again. Cindy is a physician and geneticist, and at mid-life she made the bold decision to leave her full-time hospital position and top-end salary to found a coaching program dedicated to empowering women at that tricky second-half-of-life milestone.  

Despite huge pushback from her partner and a lot of fear and trepidation, Cindy made the leap. She tore down societal boundaries to reinvent her life, and now she helps h...

“The electoral college is a real pain point for the electorate. They don’t understand it, and they don’t know why we have it in the first place…So that’s why I made this film.” That’s how Maximina Juson explains her motivation for making the extraordinary, and necessary, new documentary, One Person, One Vote? It's a film that takes a closer look at something that lots of Americans rarely question: the electoral college voting system.

If you’ve been listening to The Breakout for a while now, you’ll know that we love guests who questio...

“It's amazing that we have this tunnel vision around what success needs to look like, even though our society is filled with people who are wildly atypical.” Dr. Matt Zakreski is a dedicated clinical psychologist who's made it his mission to help harness the often overlooked abilities of the neurodivergent community – that’s anyone with a brain that works differently from the average or neurotypical person. 

Growing up as a gifted kid, Dr. Matt was neurodivergent himself. and saw firsthand how rigid practices in schools and workplaces can stifle the growth and talents of people in this comm...

“When I was trying to get sober, I couldn't find anything that had a sense of humor, and so I guess I at some point was like, well, then I have to write the thing that I can't find”. Sean Daniels is the hilarious, warm, and honest writer behind the hugely successful play, The White Chip,  a comedy about addiction. Since its debut in 2019, The White Chip has had rave reviews, sold out shows in New York, and pulled in big producing partners like Hank Azaria, Jason Biggs, and John Larroquette. But the play is just one of Sean's proje...

May is Mental Health Awareness month, and in this episode we're thrilled to shine a light on Sonia Kahlon and Kathleen Killen who host the fantastic podcast Sisters in Sobriety. We’re also talking about Everblume, an entirely unique alcohol recovery support community founded by Sonia. If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. 

“I was functioning at such a high level. I'm not going to refer to myself as an alcoholic. There's a stigma to that word”. Sonia Kahlon is a recovery coach and former addict...

“Anger is telling us something. It's often telling us that something isn't right or that a boundary is being violated”. Cara Tuttle is a lawyer, consultant, and educator focused on addressing sexual assault and harassment in higher education, and she wants us to explore our anger as a key tool in assertiveness training.  After years of working on a university campus, Cara found that assertiveness was a major struggle for women of all ages, and that has a lot to do with how women have been raised, and how complicated anger can be for women in particular. As Cara expla...

 “One of the jokes I have in coaching is, the surefire way to kill passion is to build a business around it, or marry it”. Monique Allen will tell you that entrepreneurship is it’s own special kind of trauma, and it needs a special kind of business coaching. 

Monique is a professional gardener who has spent almost four decades in the industry. Over that time, running her own landscaping business she began to see a crucial need amongst her fellow creatives and trade-based entrepreneurs: they had started a business because they loved their work, and then suddenly...

“I was expecting to feel a certain way about the accomplishments. But it wasn't fulfilling, and I couldn't understand why.” Christine Job was a talented law student and the first Black female president of her class. From an early age, her family had expected her to go into law, but despite her achievements she was terribly unsatisfied. 

Christine’s early professional life was a series of fits and starts. Big opportunities kept leading to dead ends until one day she had a nagging feeling that would not go away. A friend had told Christine about the Camino de Sant...

One night, at the tail end of a vacation in Europe, Kelli Field suddenly hit a wall. “I just started crying and I just told my husband, I can't do it anymore”. After decades of working in a high earning, high stress career that took a huge toll on her health, she realized she couldn’t go back to work. Something deep inside her had finally said no. “My life had all the trappings of the American dream. Big house, expensive cars, long commute. I did everything I thought I was supposed to do to be happy…but it was like a...

“There’s this really old, really crap story that how we got here is about what the guys did. And women were just like some side character behind a hill, just like pounding some tubers, saying, ‘Oh, sorry guys. I see you're busy. I'm just gonna build the future of our species in my actual body’.” That’s how the brilliant and hilarious Cat Bohannon introduces the idea behind her New York Times bestselling book, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. Ten years in the making, and making a huge splash internationally, the book is a fascina...

Get ready for a Valentine's Day episode like no other. True to form, we're challenging some expectations, and today, it's that age-old ideal of “the couple”.  Why is it still so glorified, and what are some ways to do relationships differently? 

Psychologist and sex educator Dr. Joli Hamilton is one expert who wants to shake up the monogamy paradigm. In her practice, Joli helps people explore non-monogamy and the many ways it can be implemented in a relationship. Joli specializes in helping couples develop their own self-awareness, and navigate the bumpy road of non-monogamy – a choice that for lots...

“I never felt I was Bengali enough. I never felt I was Italian enough…And because of that, I struggled to find my cultural identity”. Urmi Hossain is Italian by birth, and Bengali by blood, but there’s always been friction between those two identities. Born and raised in Italy to immigrant parents from Bangladesh, Urmi grew up at the center of a clash between Italian culture, strict Muslim parenting, and a society that wanted to categorize her one way or another.

You know that tendency we all sometimes have where we want to define someone's cultural identity...

“Four years after I left – four long years of being stalked and having my tires slashed – my former husband took the kids one day and disappeared out of country.” That’s the beginning of Lizbeth Meredith’s years-long nightmare of searching for her two young daughters after her abusive ex-husband kidnapped them and took them to Greece. Living on just $10 an hour at the time, Lizbeth embarks on a $100,000 journey working with a private detective, fighting through a foreign court system, getting arrested, and taking terrifying risks to bring her children home.

But this is a story that really...

With every new year comes the resolutions: the promises of big change, self-improvement, personal growth, breaking bad habits, and even plans for complete reinvention. Whatever your goals for 2024, The Breakout is back to inspire you with powerful breakout stories, perspective-shifting leaders, and thought-provoking expert advice. So, as we jump into the season of new breakouts, Keri and Kelly decided to look back on some of their favorite and most powerful breakout guest moments of 2023. 

Join us for this special new year’s episode to hear from some of these gems of 2023: guests who broke out of men...

2023 has been a big year with highs and lows for everyone. As the year draws to a close, Keri and Kelly are looking back at their breakout year with The Breakout (sorry, had to).  The show has hit number 1, the audience has had huge growth, and they’ve been hard at work on their new book that dives into a lot of the learnings from the show. It’s called Whatever the Hell You Want – An Escape Plan to Break Out of Life’s Little Boxes and Live Free From Expectations, and we’re thrilled to announce that it’s now availab...

“I lived in Southern California, born and raised my whole life. And I was bullied for being different”. That’s how Dr. Zabina Bhasin, better known as “Dr. Zee”, experienced her childhood as a South Asian American growing up in California. Today she is a child psychiatrist who is deeply committed to the health and wellbeing of children. Her work is about building self-confidence and self-awareness in kids, and she’s been committed to diversity, equity and inclusion in the healthcare space since her career began. So when her own child came to her upset and confused about how she was trea...