4 days ago
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Posted On: July 22nd 2026, 10:55 am
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Most of what you see from the wellness industry is the finished product — the retreat photo, the smiling group circle, the "transformation" caption.
What you don't see is the six months before it: the partnership negotiations, the site visits in 40-degree heat, the practitioner contracts, the endless verification of who's actually legitimate and who's just good at Instagram.
That's been my last few months across Egypt — building out business development for a wellness group spanning a wellness resort, a wellness clinic, retreats, and restaurants, while also trying to hold onto why any of us are doing this in the first place. It's easy to lose that thread. The industry rewards the image of wellbeing more reliably than it rewards actual rigor, actual psychology, actual care in how programs are built.
I've spent 30 years on the side of the work that doesn't photograph well — the systemic therapy training, the psychology background, the slow architecture of a program that actually holds up under a real client's real crisis, not just their best day. Standing in these sacred sites this month, doing the unglamorous groundwork of building something credible in this space, I keep coming back to the same standard: would this hold if nobody was watching. Would this care if there were no photo at all.
That's the version of this industry I'm trying to help build.
With a partner, I am grateful is holding the same values.
Not the one that looks like healing.
The one that is.
What you don't see is the six months before it: the partnership negotiations, the site visits in 40-degree heat, the practitioner contracts, the endless verification of who's actually legitimate and who's just good at Instagram.
That's been my last few months across Egypt — building out business development for a wellness group spanning a wellness resort, a wellness clinic, retreats, and restaurants, while also trying to hold onto why any of us are doing this in the first place. It's easy to lose that thread. The industry rewards the image of wellbeing more reliably than it rewards actual rigor, actual psychology, actual care in how programs are built.
I've spent 30 years on the side of the work that doesn't photograph well — the systemic therapy training, the psychology background, the slow architecture of a program that actually holds up under a real client's real crisis, not just their best day. Standing in these sacred sites this month, doing the unglamorous groundwork of building something credible in this space, I keep coming back to the same standard: would this hold if nobody was watching. Would this care if there were no photo at all.
That's the version of this industry I'm trying to help build.
With a partner, I am grateful is holding the same values.
Not the one that looks like healing.
The one that is.
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