In my years of working with leaders and innovators across industries, I’ve seen time and again how the unexpected can shatter even the strongest business models. The story I’m about to share is not one of corporate mergers, venture capital, or geopolitical disruption—though it has all the resonance of those themes.
This is the journey of a woman who faced personal collapse, transcended crisis, and built anew on a foundation of conscious leadership and resilience. The lessons aren’t abstract. They are highly relevant for every executive navigating volatility, uncertainty, and the ever-changing realities of our global economy.
I had the privilege of interviewing transformational coach and mentor Alara Sage, who experienced profound breakthroughs after devastating business loss. Her insights carry direct lessons for how we, as executives and leaders, can build organizations with authentic strength.
In this article, I’ll share takeaways from her journey—insights every business leader can apply to cultivate resilience, inspire innovation, and step into a new level of conscious wealth creation.
Resilience Is Forged in Collapse, Not Comfort
Executives are often praised for growth metrics: revenue expansion, market penetration, or quarterly performance. Yet the true test of leadership doesn’t come when times are easy—it arrives during collapse.
In 2021, Alara’s thriving six-figure mentorship business fell apart when her entire reserves were stolen, and she soon faced financial freefall. Any of us in the business world understand the sense of devastation that comes when years of effort unravel overnight.
Here’s what’s important for leaders: When collapse strips away the safety net, it forces you to face the hidden architecture of your business and leadership mindset. For Alara, it exposed limiting beliefs about money and power she hadn’t needed to confront when success was flowing.
For executives, company crises—whether financial, reputational, or cultural—can be the same crucible. They uncover organizational blind spots:
- Shaky foundations masked by short-term wins
- Cultural fractures hidden beneath high performance indicators
- Dependency on unsustainable systems or outdated mental models
Resilience is not simply “bouncing back.” It is a radical reengineering of foundations. It requires us to confront belief systems and structures that, while invisible in prosperity, become painfully clear in crisis.
Ask yourself: If everything was wiped away tomorrow—would your organizational culture, leadership team, and vision still carry forward? Or was the success built on borrowed ground?
Personal Power, Money, and Innovation Are Intertwined
A conversation that stood out for me was the connection between personal power, financial structures, and creative energy. Business leaders don’t often talk about this triad in boardrooms. Yet when you remove the business jargon, it is precisely what drives innovation and sustainable growth.
Alara described how shame around money and unresolved trauma shaped not only her financial results but also her ability to harness true creativity. In leadership terms: a distorted relationship with power breeds scarcity, manipulation, and fear-based decision-making.
Executives see this every day:
- Power struggles at the senior table that block collaboration
- Misaligned incentives that prioritize short-term wins while starving long-term innovation
- Organizations stuck in scarcity mindset, hoarding resources instead of investing in growth
The key shift? Moving from power-as-force to power-as-service. True leadership embraces power that uplifts, collaborates, and expands. The leaders of the future will be those who:
- Redefine wealth not merely in terms of shareholder return but in impact, talent empowerment, and long-term sustainability.
- Address scarcity mindset directly by investing in cultures of abundance and creativity.
- Treat innovation as life force—not a luxury but the core driver of evolution in the enterprise.
Executives who integrate wealth consciousness into their strategy cultivate organizations that thrive not by extraction but by expansion. They become magnets for talent, opportunity, and customer loyalty.
Presence and Conscious Choice Are the Real Performance Edge
Here’s the most practical shift, yet the hardest to master: leadership presence.
Business strategy often emphasizes frameworks, roadmaps, and KPIs. But as Alara highlighted, human beings run 95% of their lives on subconscious programming. That means for leaders and executives, most decisions in meetings, negotiations, and cultural shaping happen on autopilot.
When was the last time you stopped to examine the “internal operating system” behind how you make decisions?
Alara’s lesson: Presence interrupts autopilot. By training yourself and your teams to stop, breathe, and make conscious choices in the moment, you:
- Defuse reactionary decision-making
- Create space for transparent collaboration
- Protect your organization from the ripple effects of fear-based responses
For executives, presence becomes a competitive advantage. Markets reward leaders who can stay grounded amid volatility. Teams thrive under leaders who model calm clarity rather than frenetic reaction.
Think of it as executive-level “quantum mechanics.” By consciously shifting your mindset and frequency in the present, you alter not just the immediate conversation but the trajectory of outcomes. It’s no longer theory—it’s strategy.
Bringing It All Together: Executive Application
At its core, Alara’s story is more than personal transformation. It is a strategic blueprint for executives navigating a hyper-volatile landscape:
- Redefine resilience not as recovery but reconstruction. Build on unshakable foundations—vision, values, and aligned culture.
- Reconnect power with service. Build wealth through abundance, creativity, and impact, not extraction.
- Prioritize presence. Teach leadership teams to interrupt subconscious programming and choose consciously, creating cultures of conscious performance.
The executive journey today mirrors the one Alara walked through on a personal level: crises expose the hidden fractures, but presence and power-in-service rebuild organizations into something far greater.
For leaders willing to do this deeper work, the results extend beyond the balance sheet into legacy, impact, and sustainable advantage.
Call to Action
Business executives: The challenge isn’t navigating external turbulence—it’s mastering the internal operating system from which you lead.
- What limiting beliefs are woven into the culture of your company?
- How do you and your leadership team define power—and does it reflect manipulation or service?
- Are you cultivating presence as a performance edge, or operating unconsciously from inherited beliefs?
These are not simply personal development questions. They are strategic imperatives for leadership in the 21st century.
The organizations that thrive will be those committed to building resilience, innovating from abundance, and leading with presence. Anything less will falter in the face of collapse.
Listen to the full episode on C-Suite Radio: Disrupt & Innovate | C-Suite Network
Watch the episode: DI 108 The Power of Presence in Transforming Lives
This article was drafted with the assistance of an AI writing assistant (Abacus.AI’s ChatLLM Teams) and edited by Lisa L. Levy for accuracy, tone, and final content.
