Work Life by Design – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Season 7 has been one of the most personal yet—an honest reflection of a year filled with growth, insight, and powerful conversations. In this wrap-up episode, I’m sharing the key themes and lessons that emerged across the season:

• How personal transformation fuels professional fulfilment
• Why mastery isn’t perfection, but a commitment to growth
• The connection between workspaces, well-being, and culture
• The impact of neurodiversity and designing for inclusion
• The wisdom of nature, rest, and healing

From solo reflections to rich guest conversations, this season was about designing a work life that actually works for you.

💫 Whether you're craving inspiration or seeking real change, this episode offers a powerful close to a transformational season—and a beautiful springboard for what’s next.

🎧 Tune in now and let’s keep evolving, together.

Connect with Mel;

Email | Insta |
 LinkedIn | Website | Whitepaper - The Road Map to Employee Experience 

Book a 30min Complimentary Discovery Call with Mel

EXHALE | THE RETREAT

Come join me for 4 days immersed in nature as we reconnect to our body, heart and soul, reigniting your fire within!

TELL ME MORE!

NEW WHITEPAPER DOWNLOAD | Leveraging Place - The importance of building community - not just culture - at work.

Get your copy of Mel’s new Book “The Next Workplace; Designing Dynamic Environments that Inspire Human Potential”

When was the last time you let yourself be swept away by the sheer beauty of the world around you?

Maybe it’s the sun sinking into a golden horizon or the way light dances through trees. These moments remind us of the profound joy that’s available — if we pause long enough to notice.

In this special conversation, Dr. Meg Hooper and I explore the concept of awe, inspired by Julia Baird’s remarkable book Phosphorescence — a guide to finding light and wonder even in life’s darkest times.

In this episode, we explore:

🌿 How reconnecting with nature can heal and ground us
🌿 The powerful impact of designing greener cities and communities
🌿 How to nurture your own internal light through small, meaningful practices
🌿 Why wonder and awe are essential acts of self-care

This conversation is an invitation to seek out the extraordinary hiding in the everyday — and to rediscover the vibrant, luminous energy within yourself.

BOOK MENTIONED:

Phosphorescence

Connect with Meg

Website |
 LinkedIn

Connect with Mel;

Email | Insta |
 LinkedIn | Website | Whitepaper - The Road Map to Employee Experience 

Book a 30min Complimentary Discovery Call with Mel

DATE ANNOUNCED - BUSINESS PLANNING DAY

Step out of the day to day, create goals with soul and design a business that lights you up!

Gain clarity on how you, as the leader of your business and life, want to FEEL this new financial year. Create your own sustainability plan to enable you to FEEL this way the whole year through.

Tuesday 17th June, 9am - The Calile Hotel, Fortitude Valley

SAVE YOUR SEAT!

EXHALE | THE RETREAT

Come join me for 4 days immersed in nature as we reconnect to our body, heart and soul, reigniting your fire within!

TELL ME MORE!

NEW WHITEPAPER DOWNLOAD | Leveraging Place - The importance of building community - not just culture - at work.

Get your copy of Mel’s new Book “The Next Workplace; Designing Dynamic Environments that Inspire Human Potential”

When I kicked off this season it was with the intent to reconnect to the roots of our namesake COMUNiTI, and it has not disappointed!

This season was to encourage us to take a broader look at what we should be focusing on to encourage people back to our workplaces.  After first answering the pre-vailing question “Why?” we need to then consider that creating a workplace worth going to, requires more than a fantastic fitout! 

Across this season I have shared a framework for building Community within your workplace, the role of place, and in turn its own detailed framework.

I have deepened my own understanding of what it means to design for community.  And what I have learned from my guests is that when we lean into creating places that support people in this way, we are far more likely to build communities than we are to just building businesses. 

This episode is a recap of the thoughts I’ve been left to ponder from each guest and how I can play with these ideas in my own work and life.

Whilst we are living in a highly complex and challenging time, it is also one of the most exciting!  Togeher, we are reshaping the world of work. 

Reimagining what work looks like.

What our workplaces will look like.

And the role that both need to play in enhancing our experience of work and building communities.

I’m going to be taking a few months break from the podcast now, but I’ll be back later this year with a fresh new season!

One of the things that I have noticed as I have grown is that the experiences that we have are not unique to us and that if we look around often many of us are challenged by the paths that our lives have taken. While we may not be openly and outwardly shouting it from the roof tops or even whispering it to our closest of friends, there is for many of us a period of breakdown which leads to break through.

And this is where today’s guest Keri is here to share what she has learned from both personal experience and from working within Health Retreats how we can reconnect with our midline and move forward in alignment with our own personal path.

Keri Krieger is a modern-day mystic, fusing her passion for spirituality with the ancient remedies of Chinese medicine and acupuncture to guide women in coming home to themselves.

Keri acknowledges that our daily lives are filled with so many responsibilities and overwhelm, so she is on a mission to provide women with the tools they need to bring things back to basics so they can thrive as they are destined to do

This is a very conversational chat between two women navigating the messy middle covering everything from burnout to finding a slower pace of life, exploring the cycles and seasons of life to wisdom that comes with age.

Keri even shares with us some of her own rituals for reconnecting with her midline, along with the challenges that can come when we let our ego chime in.

Keri Krieger

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Melissa Marsden

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“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how”
Friedrich Nietzsche

Ask yourself this;
What is it that you hope to achieve while you're here on this earth? And what is the impact that you want to make? Why do you do what you do? Why is it important? What is the impact that that is going to have on the people around you?

Knowing why you do what you do is just as important, if not more important than, doing what you do.

Knowing what you do and how you do it is the logistics, the functional and the logical part of your day to day. Knowing why you do it, is what connects you to your greater purpose in life. Your whole reason for being. The impact that you are going to have on those around you, your community, and the world at large. It is the legacy that you will leave for having been here on this earth.

In today’s episode, I unpack three reasons knowing your ‘why’ is important ranging from the Japanese philosophy of Ikigai to business coaching to aligning your moral and decision-making compass.

Knowing your why is just one of the factors that forms part of the ability to live your life by your own design. When you know why you want to achieve the things that you do you can then make more informed decisions about who you want to work for, the type of work that you want to do and, most importantly, who you want to be.

If you are looking for more help on understanding your why, head to my website and download my free ‘Setting your North Star’ workbook. It has useful tools and tips to help you align your purpose and values to your life. Visit melissamarsden.com.au/northstar for your copy.

Melissa Marsden

Instagram | LinkedIn | Website

In this week’s chat, I am incredibly excited to bring you our guest; the beautiful Samantha Wills.

For those of you who are not familiar with Samantha, she is the creative powerhouse behind the Samantha Wills jewellery brand. Starting this business in 2004, as a fresh face 21-year-old from her dining room table, she grew it into a successful global business. She lived in New York for 10 years, had production houses in Asia and India, and offices in France and Japan. She then famously announced its closure in mid 2018, when it was continuing to enjoy widespread commercial success. Because there was a lot more going on behind the scenes.

Samantha has recently written a memoir of her life's journey in her book Of Gold and Dust, which is a beautiful, unveiled, and honest account of what it took for her to build the Samantha Wills jewellery brand, the sacrifices that it required of her, and how it took her a two-year journey to come to the decision to close what was a highly successful business.

Samantha is an incredibly talented and intuitive businesswoman; she has come up with some genius ways of creating business partnerships and staying true to herself. So, in today’s conversation, we dive into all of this and cover everything from the rise of her business, to how she felt in some of those darkest times navigating very personal and professional challenges that she encountered, along with the resilience that you can find when you're sitting in the rubble of your life. And most importantly, the power that comes from rising out of that.

We also dive into how the strength of her values guided her exit from the business and the courage and integrity that comes with that through to a fearful moment as she started to turn 30. And she was realising that she had been sacrificing so much for her business, she hadn't been ticking life's boxes or the boxes that we're told that we should be ticking.

This is a conversation that will really going to get you thinking about your own life choices. It's going to have you nodding along in agreement, and it's really going to give you a good laugh along the way. She is a beautiful person both inside, generous with her energy and wisdom. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.

Melissa Marsden

Instagram | LinkedIn | Website

I’ll let you in on a little secret.

Balance is BS. There is no work/life balance. You can’t have a work persona and a life persona.

It’s all about integration.

In today’s episode, I’m going to be discussing The Balance Wheel – the most useful tool I’ve found in examining and evaluating all the different segments of our lives and identifying where our time and energy needs to be spent.

I’ll go through:

• What is a balance wheel?
• The segments of life (outside of work!)
• Work/Life integration and boundaries
• Setting goals and shifting your balance wheel
• A real life example of balancing the wheel in action.

Also, the Live a Life by Design 6 week experience is now LIVE! Sign up here for more tools and strategies on creating a work and life you love.

Or if you want a bit more of a taste, sign up for the FREE Level UP! Masterclass going through actionable strategies to transform life and work. Just register here, and you’ll get the Setting your North Star download for free.

Melissa Marsden

Instagram | LinkedIn | Website

One person that I believe optimises the idea of creating a work life they love is Tina Tower. Tina is a self-confessed professional development junkie and lover of work, but has also learned the hard way that continuing to push through is not always the best way.

Tina has lived a vast and varied life to date, starting her first business at 20, she went on to found and grow her tutoring business into a national franchise of 35 centres. When her business was acquired in 2016, she began coaching other people on how to scale their service-based businesses, however, she found she was often repeating the same fundamental information and so decided to create an online course.

Deciding to test out her newfound freedom with online course creation, Tina set off to travel the world for a year with her husband and two children visiting 28 countries, whilst growing the online business a few hours a day.

Since returning her online empire has continue to grow and she know runs her “little’ online business from her small farm on Australia’s East Coast.

In today’s chat, Tina shares with us both the ups and downs of business, but more importantly how her mindset and approach to her work life has morphed and evolved to match the seasons of her life. She shares how her purpose for her life and her business fuels her drive every day and the routines and rituals that she has embraced to ensure that she is showing up in a way that delivers massive value to those that work with her.

As a member of Tina’s Her Empire Builder, I have had the great pleasure of working closely with Tina over the past 12mths and seen the passion that she has for her business but also the foundations that she has laid for herself to ensure she’s living her best life in alignment with her vision.

Tina Tower

Website | Instagram | Book

Melissa Marsden

Instagram | LinkedIn | Website

You’re probably thinking, ‘Mel, don’t be ridiculous, I know who I am’. But do you really, truly know who you are? How you work, what makes you tick? What values you stand for or stand against? Could you tell me these things if I asked you?

And the reason I asked this question is because until we truly know who we are, I believe that we are just really reacting to the expectations and requests of others, whether that be our family, our friends, our boss, our colleagues, our clients, or even just society in general. Just like I did.

Today, I unpack why it’s important to understand what makes you tick, how this helps you show up in work and life and how having this knowledge and insight can help you maximise your strengths and help you work towards what you want.

I cover:

• Tools to understand your motivations
• How this knowledge allows you to level up your life
• The value of personality profiling style tools in a team environment

LIVE A LIFE BY DESIGN

In this six week program, I take you through the tools and the frameworks that I have curated over the last 10 years to live a life by my own design. Plus, I've also then taken the steps of how to put it into action and provided a framework to help you start designing your dream life. Learn more about the Live a Life by Design experience here, and join the waitlist.

FREE DOWNLOAD

If you’re interested in the first tools in the workbook to see if this is for you, download the Setting Your North Star exercise!

Melissa Marsden

Website | Facebook | Instagram

Do you trust your gut instinct? Maybe you only trust it in certain aspects of your life like work or relationships? Sometimes our gut feeling is our best indicator of which direction to take, but learning to tune in to it can be a journey.

Today I am joined by Tory Archbold the Founder and Director of Powerful Steps. 

Prior to 2019 Tory was running the Global PR agency Torstar, launching big brands, celebrities, and influencers such as Megan Gale, Nespresso, Victoria’s Secret and Drew Barrymore in the Australian market. However, while she was getting everyone else’s message out to the world, she realised she had her own story to tell.

Launching Torstar in her twenties, she had built a fabulous life as a single mum, running a global business with a team of 22 including two executive assistants.  It was a near death experience and 10 years of being stalked that gave her a fresh perspective.  She wanted a life with more purpose.

Today, Tory is the CEO of Powerful Steps where she is on a mission to share her toolkit with high octane businesswomen to plot their personal roadmap to success. 

This was such a fabulous conversation with Tory where we journeyed through her previous business Torstar and the possibilities and opportunities that she has embraced to see her create Powerful Steps.  She shares with us the importance of trusting your gut instinct, the power of clear values and her mantra for life, as well as her 3 pieces of advice for anyone wanting to live a life by design.

Tory Archbold

Website | Email | LinkedIn | Instagram | Powerful Steps Podcast

Melissa Marsden

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