Short Story Long: Life Lessons from Leaders, Coaches, and Entrepreneurs
Short Story Long shares life-changing stories of growth, resilience, and reinvention from leaders, coaches, and everyday people navigating pivotal turning points. Hosted by leadership coach Beki Fraser, each episode explores the moments that shaped someone's path and the lessons we can all learn.
Every other week, Beki follows up with a Skill Builder episode that breaks down insights from the previous story into practical tools, reflection prompts, and leadership actions.
Whether you're building a business, transitioning into a new career, or learning to lead with greater purpose, this podcast offers real stories and practical strategies to help you grow. New episodes every other week.
Episodes
74 episodes
The Power Of Raising Your Hand — Barry Moline
The career moments that change us rarely arrive with spotlights. Sometimes they show up as an awkward pause in a staff meeting, a simple request for volunteers, and a quiet choice to raise your hand when nobody else will. Becky Fraser sits down...
Choose Your Own Career Path
A promotion can look perfect on paper and still feel wrong in your gut. That moment is where we start, with Theresa Gutierrez choosing sustainability over HR and Felicia MacDonald stepping from a large corporation into leadership at a very smal...
Lessons from Leading Large v. Small Teams — Felicia MacDonald's Story
A layoff list can change how you see leadership forever. I sit down with Felicia MacDonald, a steady, thoughtful leader who spends years in big corporate publishing, navigates a major digital transformation, and then hits the moment many profes...
Sense Making In Your Career
Career decisions don’t usually blow up overnight. They quietly form in the background, in the stories we tell ourselves about a changed meeting invite list, a new org structure, a shift in feedback, or a role that still “works” but suddenly fee...
The Power of a Career Reset — Shahnaz Broucek’s Story
A career can look successful on paper and still feel like it’s shrinking you. That tension is where Shahnaz Broucek's story lands: she helped build a mortgage and title company to roughly 55 employees, rode the boom years, then faced the housin...
Outgrowing a Role That Works
Success can be the very thing that hides the truth: you’re doing well, people trust you, nothing is “broken” and yet something feels off. We talk about that quiet kind of misalignment and why it’s one of the most important signals a leader can ...
When Your Dream Job Evolves — Michelle Davis' Story
You can “pick your own hours” and still feel like you never stop working. That tension kicks off a candid conversation with executive coach Michelle Davis about the real cost of solopreneur life, from the guilt of taking time off to the constan...
Leadership Through Uncertainty
Leadership doesn’t wait for you to feel ready. It shows up when a team is stuck, when a tough decision is sitting untouched, or when the tension in the room is obvious and no one names it. I’m Beki Fraser, and I’m breaking down the leadership s...
Leaving The Ladder — Ed Holinski's Story
What does it take to pivot from a successful sales career into shaping the culture and capability of a global company—without formal training? We sit down with Ed Holinski to unpack the inflection point that moved him from brokerage and risk se...
When Control Becomes the Problem
What if the fastest way to lead better isn’t more hustle, but clearer language for your strengths and a smarter design for your team? We explore how to move from forcing outcomes to architecting around what people naturally do well, so pressure...
Self-Awareness at Work — Ingrid Stabb’s Story
A frantic book club, a late-night search, and an unexpected coffee with a hero set off a career pivot that rewired how we think about time, collaboration, and leadership. Becky sits down with author and Enneagram expert Ingrid Stabb to explore ...
Respect Under Pressure: Why Civility Matters at Work
Pressure is rising in many workplaces, but turning up the heat rarely creates better thinking. Becky makes the case that civility is not window dressing—it’s the operating system for clear decisions, resilient strategy, and teams that speak up ...
So You Tried Harder And It Got Worse
We trace the quiet moment when hard work stops moving the needle and show how to shift from good intentions to real impact. We share stories about overfunctioning, misaligned roles, and becoming the bottleneck, and we offer simple tools to buil...
Alignment Over Achievement — Robert Heath's Story
Ever chased “go-to” status only to realize it’s costing you results at work and presence at home? That’s the tension we unpack with Robert Heath Sr., a nationally recognized leadership strategist and former Marine Corps officer who rebuilt a st...
Stop Performing Leadership And Start Practicing It
Ever felt like you’re acting like a leader instead of being one? We dig into the real difference between performing leadership and practicing it, and why steady confidence grows from competence, follow-through, and results under pressure. No gi...
Leadership Without Pretending — Jose Bordetas' Story
A single moment can rewire a life. For Jose Bordetas, it was the birth of his daughter—and the decision to trade the kitchen line and tour buses for a people-first leadership path that scaled from help desk to global operations. We dig into how...
Self-Regulation Is Leadership
Pressure doesn’t make great leaders—presence does. We dig into why the best leadership moves often begin inside your nervous system, long before a difficult conversation or high-stakes decision. Drawing on lived experience and insights from a p...
Beyond The Plan: Compassion And Power — Annie Paraison's Story
A quiet alarm in the body can be louder than any strategic plan. That’s where our conversation with Annie begins: the moment joy dimmed, restlessness rose, and an inner knowing said it was time to step away from nonprofit work and build somethi...
Human Choices, Real Leadership
We revisit five leaders whose choices show how humanity shapes real decisions under pressure. Fulfillment, empowerment, grace, resilience, and agency move from ideas to habits you can use right away.• Integrating identity with leadershi...
Lead Through The Swirl
Uncertainty isn’t just noisy—it quietly warps how we lead. Beki digs into the hidden cost of a chaotic year: not only drained calendars and frayed nerves, but a distorted leadership identity that turns visionary thinkers into reactive firefight...
Trust Your Voice: Two Interviews Reveal the Heart of My Work
Start with the person, not the playbook. That simple shift runs through Beki’s journey from HR leader managing mergers and reorganizations to a coach who helps thoughtful, questioning leaders turn inner clarity into outer results. Across two ca...
No, Not Every Challenge Is A Gift, But Gratitude Still Works
I explore gratitude as a daily leadership practice that turns ambition into belonging and presence into progress. There's a simple three-direction exercise—upward, outward, inward—to make gratitude real at work and at home.• gratitude a...
When Vision Meets Uncertainty, Choose Presence
Plans rarely survive contact with real life, and that’s where leadership truly begins. Drawing on Kaila’s leap from solopreneur to agency owner while becoming a parent, we explore how to trade grind for grace and control for connection without ...
Shifting Leadership From Me to We — Kaila Sachse’s Story
Ever built two babies at once—one human, one company? That’s the real-world tension Kaila brings to the mic as she shares how a leap from solo designer to agency owner collided with a surprise pregnancy, forcing her to redesign time, pricing, a...
Rewriting the Story of Success
What if safety and fulfillment were not opposites, but partners you could design on purpose? We walk through a practical, human path from control to contribution—using a true story about shifting from programming to journalism as a lens for sma...