She started as a barista making $6.50 an hour and ended up as COO of Walmart Canada, but that's not the most interesting part of the her story.

This weeks episode is with Nabeela Elasyed. Former COO of Walmart Canada and CHRO of IKEA US, a Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches member, and the author of the forthcoming Breaking Burnout. She's spent 20 years leading some of the world's largest organisations before stepping away to follow a different journey.

This conversation was such a pleasure. Nabeela and I are on very aligned missions in the world — and she brings a perspective I rarely get to sit across from. She went from a first-generation immigrant childhood, where work became both her escape and her identity, through twenty years at the top of the corporate world, to walking away from a seven-figure career and starting over. What she traces in this conversation is the interior cost of that climb — the postpartum depression and anxiety she carried in silence for years, what happens when the role that defined you is gone, and what it actually looks like to reimagine success once the title is gone. She's thought deeply about all of this. And she's lived every part of it.

In this episode:

• The internal operating system that drives overachievers - where it comes from, and what it does
• A decade of high-level executive performance sustained alongside hidden mental illness
• Why anchoring your identity in your career, your title, or any single thing puts you at serious risk when that thing is interrupted
• The difference between loving your work and being in love with it
• Why people with deep purpose are actually more vulnerable to burnout
• Her faith as the one constant through the lowest moments
• What the Gallup thriving scale tells us about the state of the global workforce, and why she's still optimistic

This is an incredible episode and if there's anything to take away from it, it's that that your value is inherent.
You don't have to produce to rest, to be worthy, or to be loved. For a lot of high achievers, that's not an easy thing to hear — and she'd know.

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Nabeela Elsayed:

🌐 Website: nabeelaelsayed.com
📖 Pre-order Breaking Burnout: https://www.nabeelaelsayed.com/breaking-burnout
📸 Instagram: @nabeelaelsayed
💼 LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/nabeelaixtabalan/?originalSubdomain=ca

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The Unknown Path is a podcast about the untold stories behind success — real conversations with extraordinary people.

Most of us are handed a blueprint for success before we're old enough to question it. But what happens when you've spent decades following that blueprint, only to find it delivers far less than it promised?

JP Newman is the founder of one of Austin's most respected real estate private equity firms, with over a billion dollars in transaction volume, and the founder of Fulfillionaire, a space where leaders and high performers come to redefine success and explore why so many people who reach the success they've chased still feel like something is missing.

In this conversation, JP reflects openly on how reaching the goals he'd sought for years brought anxiety instead of peace. From the limiting beliefs picked up in a childhood shaped by refugee family history, through twelve companies that didn't work and a decade of feeling like he had nothing to show, to building a billion dollar firm and discovering the money didn't bring the peace he expected.

What emerges is something far more personal than a framework. A moment on a mountain trail at twenty-nine, alone, asking the universe something, where he found a fortune cookie on an otherwise clean path, read four words, and cried in a way he couldn't immediately explain. It was the first time he understood that everything he'd been searching for externally was something only he could give himself.

This is a conversation about money, meaning, the net worth trap, ancestral scarcity, and what it really means to build a life that's genuinely rich, not just financially.

In this episode:

• The net worth trap and why the anxiety that drives accumulation doesn't leave when the money arrives
• The limiting beliefs inherited from a refugee family history that meant money never felt safe, even when it came
• Twelve companies that didn't work and a decade of carrying no good story at parties
• The two questions he took an oath to at seventeen that quietly reorganised everything that followed
• A fortune cookie on a mountain trail and the story he's never told publicly before
• What love actually feels like to him now, in his own words

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JP Newman: fulfillionaire.com | @jpnewman_

The Unknown Path is a podcast about the untold stories behind success — real conversations with extraordinary people about the parts of their journey nobody asks them about.

theunknownpathpodcast.com Instagram: @jemfuller

Josh Piterman spent years becoming somebody.

The Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera. Jean Valjean in Les Misérables. Performing some of the biggest roles in musical theatre on Australia’s largest stages and London’s West End.

But this conversation became much less about success itself, and much more about what happens when your identity becomes fused with performance.

Josh speaks openly about masks — the personas we build to feel worthy, validated, and enough and the danger of losing yourself inside them. He talks about the adrenaline and exhaustion of eight shows a week, the imposter syndrome that never fully disappears, the burnout that accumulated underneath the applause, and the moment his body finally forced him to stop.

What stayed with me most was hearing him describe standing backstage during Les Misérables, staring into the mirror before a show, and realising something inside him already knew he was done.

In this episode:

• The performer mask and mistaking achievement for self-worth
• The physical toll of carrying major theatre roles night after night
• The role Delta Goodrem played in changing the trajectory of his career
• Singing at the Opera House and the call from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s team
• Burnout, throat surgeries, and learning to listen when the body says no
• Meditation, breathwork, and the practices that helped quiet his mind
• Why purpose isn’t something you achieve — it’s something you give
• The difference between becoming somebody and knowing who you are

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Josh Piterman is an internationally acclaimed musical theatre performer, singer, speaker, author, and coach best known for playing The Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera and Jean Valjean in Les Misérables in Australia and London’s West End.

He now also works in breathwork, mindset, meditation, and transformational coaching.

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The Unknown Path is a podcast about the untold stories behind success — real conversations with extraordinary people about the parts of their journey nobody asks them about.

theunknownpathpodcast.com
Instagram: @jemfuller

If something in this episode lands for you, share it with someone who might need it today.

This conversation touches on burnout, identity, emotional struggle, and healing. If it brings something up for you, be gentle with yourself, and reach out to someone you trust.