In this episode of the Bee Formless™ Flow Driven CEO Podcast, I connected with Ryan Fowler, CEO and Co-Founder of Rio’s Legacy, for a deeply personal conversation about his son Rio, paediatric palliative care and the unexpected path that led him from education into leading a charity.

When Rio was just 18 months old, what began with gastro became something Ryan and his wife Karen could never have imagined. They took their little boy to hospital and he never came home. Eventually their family found Bear Cottage, where Ryan’s understanding of palliative care changed completely. He had initially resisted going because it felt like giving up on his son, until he heard something: “Children come here to live, not to die.”

I loved hearing Ryan talk about the seemingly little things Bear Cottage gave their family: someone offering to make a cup of tea, home-cooked meals, their four-year-old daughter Remy being able to play, a therapy dog sitting with Rio and the chance to spend Christmas together.

After losing Rio in January 2018, Ryan and Karen started asking why so few families across Australia had access to this kind of care. That question became Rio’s Legacy and has taken Ryan somewhere he never expected to go. As he told me, “I didn’t sign up to be a CEO.” Today, he works across government, healthcare, business and community to advocate for greater access to paediatric palliative care, including Mounties Care Cottage in Western Sydney.

We kept coming back to Ryan’s belief that every child is “fearfully and wonderfully made”, however long or short their time in this world.

THE SHAPE SHIFT IN MOTION

At the heart of this conversation was a shift in how we understand paediatric palliative care: from something Ryan initially saw as giving up, to a place where children can live and families can be families.

LEARN (LETTING GO)
✨ Palliative care does not mean giving up on a child.
✨ A hospital is not always the only place a child can receive care.
✨ Supporting a child also means holding the family around them.

UNLEARN (CREATE, REIMAGINE & RESHAPE)
✨ Reimagine palliative care around living, dignity and time together.
✨ Reshape a system where access should not depend on where a family lives.
✨ Recognise how much small acts of humanity can matter.

RELEARN (TEST & IMPLEMENT)
✨ Give families clearer choices and conversations around palliative care.
✨ Let lived experience expose what our systems are missing.
✨ Understand that leadership can find us through what we never planned to experience.

ACTIVE RECOVERY (REFLECT & RESET)
✨ What does caring look like when curing is no longer possible?
✨ What if we saw children’s hospices as places to live, rather than places to die?
✨ What can love continue to shape long after a life has ended?

🌐 https://rioslegacy.org.au
🎟️ A Night in Rio: https://www.mountiesgroup.com.au/a-night-in-rio

💭 What could change if every Australian family facing the unimaginable had somewhere they could simply be a family?

Book a Strategic Shape Shift Diagnostic to illuminate what needs to shift across leadership, business and brand, from the inside out.
🔗 https://calendly.com/beeformless/strategicshapeshiftdiagnostic

#beeformless #flowdrivenceo #rioslegacy #paediatricpalliativecare #bearcottage #leadership #humanity #socialimpact #love

In this episode of the Bee Formless™ Flow Driven CEO Podcast, I connected with Norah Copithorne, Founder of Nature’s Defence, and from the beginning I knew this conversation was going to go somewhere a little different.

For the first 50 years of her life, Norah was known as Lynn. On her 50th birthday, she decided to shake things up and spend the next 50 as Norah, and I loved hearing her say, “I love the Norah of now.” Getting there has taken her through corporate life, debilitating migraines, some deeply challenging periods and a gradual process of understanding how much of her life had been led by her mind.

One of my favourite stories was Norah walking through Sydney holding her own internal board meetings, trying to understand the relationship between her mind, heart, body and soul. Eventually they reached an agreement: her heart would lead and her mind would become the COO. She laughed that she initially forgot to invite her body altogether, which said so much about how she had been living.

We got into the breadcrumbs that started appearing as Norah stopped forcing and began paying attention to what felt right, including the unexpected trail that eventually led her to Nature’s Defence. As she said, “Each of us has our own breadcrumb path. The trick is recognising it.”

I related to the tension Norah described between trusting what is unfolding and the part of us that still wants to control, push and know exactly where everything is going. She spoke about learning to let people lean in rather than forcing herself to be heard, and how difficult it can be to know whether we are doing enough when we have spent so much of our lives believing more effort must be the answer.

THE SHAPE SHIFT IN MOTION

At the heart of this conversation was a shift from trying to think our way into certainty to becoming quiet enough to recognise what already feels true.

LEARN (LETTING GO)

✨ The belief that the mind always needs to be in charge.

✨ The instinct to push harder when something is not unfolding quickly enough.

✨ The expectation that transformation should happen on our preferred timeline.

UNLEARN (CREATE, REIMAGINE & RESHAPE)

✨ Let the heart lead while allowing the mind to support rather than control.

✨ Notice the people, ideas and experiences that repeatedly pull at your attention.

✨ Reimagine trust as something we practise rather than something we wait to feel.

RELEARN (TEST & IMPLEMENT)

✨ Listen to the body before it has to shout.

✨ Build relationships and businesses around kindness, consciousness and choice.

✨ Create enough space for people and opportunities to lean in.

ACTIVE RECOVERY (REFLECT & RESET)

✨ Where is your mind trying to control something your heart already understands?

✨ What breadcrumb keeps appearing that you may be dismissing?

✨ What would change if you trusted the next step without needing the whole path?

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/norah-copithorne-00096111
🌐 https://www.naturesdefence.co

💭 What breadcrumb has been asking for your attention?

Book a Strategic Shape Shift Diagnostic to illuminate what needs to shift in your leadership, business and brand, from the inside out.
🔗 https://calendly.com/beeformless/strategicshapeshiftdiagnostic

#beeformless #flowdrivenceo #naturesdefence #trustthebreadcrumbs #heartledleadership #intuition #identity #consciousbusiness

In this episode of the Bee Formless™ Flow Driven CEO Podcast, I connected with Cory Blumenfeld, Founder of BlueMoso and CSMoso, to explore a question I think more founders need to sit with: what if the hardest way is not always the right way?

Cory knows the cost of efforting. Earlier in his entrepreneurial journey, never taking a day off felt like a badge of honour until sixteen-hour days and constant pressure began showing up physically. What changed was not his ambition, instead his relationship with how he was using it.

Today, Cory has three words tattooed on himself: “Find your easy.”

As he put it, “It doesn’t mean it’s easy. When you find something that’s your easy, it’s still hard, but you’re in a state of flow.”

It also doesn’t mean the effort disappears, as Cory said, “The time you put in today equals the time you get back tomorrow.”

That idea opened up a much bigger conversation about founder dependency, ego and why so much of a business can remain trapped inside the founder’s head. We explored the difference between handing people tasks and giving them genuine ownership of an outcome, and why building something that can move without you requires letting go before you feel completely ready.

I also loved where we went around the human experience becoming the premium tier when it comes to business. As more repetitive work becomes automated, Cory believes empathy, judgment, connection and the ability to understand another person become far more valuable, not less.

Underneath all of it was another question: if we are working so hard to buy back our time, what do we actually want that time back for?

THE SHAPE SHIFT IN MOTION

At the heart of this conversation was a shift from measuring success by how much we carry to creating the freedom to choose what deserves us.

LEARN (LETTING GO)

✨ The belief that never stopping is proof of commitment.

✨ The idea that the founder needs to remain inside every decision.

✨ The habit of confusing completed tasks with meaningful outcomes.

UNLEARN (CREATE, REIMAGINE & RESHAPE)

✨ Find your easy by noticing where effort turns into natural flow.

✨ Build systems and documentation so knowledge can move beyond the founder.

✨ Reshape work around outcomes that give people greater ownership and purpose.

RELEARN (TEST & IMPLEMENT)

✨ Delegate with enough clarity that people can genuinely take responsibility.

✨ Use automation for repetitive work while protecting the human experiences that create trust and value.

✨ Treat the time you put in today as an investment in the freedom you want tomorrow.

ACTIVE RECOVERY (REFLECT & RESET)

✨ Where are you forcing something that may not be your easy?

✨ What are you still holding because your ego tells you only you can do it?

✨ If you got a thousand hours back this year, what would you want them for?

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/coryblumenfeld/
🌐 https://www.bluemoso.com

💭 What would change if you stopped trying to do everything?

Book a Strategic Shape Shift Diagnostic to illuminate what needs to change across leadership, business and brand, from the inside out.

🔗 https://calendly.com/beeformless/strategicshapeshiftdiagnostic

#beeformless #flowdrivenceo #bluemoso #CSMoso #findyoureasy #operationalfreedom #humanvalue #founderjourney