I live in Nova Scotia with my dog, Maggie, and I’m the author of The Sovran Wellth Keys, The Daily Sovran, and The Witness.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve noticed where things don’t work the way they’re supposed to.

It started with physical space. I could walk into a room and tell pretty quickly if it was actually set up to function, or if people were going to have to adjust themselves to make it work. Not in a design sense, in a practical one. You can feel it.

Over time, I realized I was doing the same thing everywhere else.

In conversations, where everything sounds right but nothing really moves. In work that looks solid on paper but becomes harder to maintain the closer you get to it. In systems people depend on that only work because someone is constantly compensating behind the scenes.

The pattern was consistent. Something could appear right and still not hold.

Most people work around that. I kept trying to understand it.

For a while, that meant staying in situations that weren’t built to work the way they were being used. That’s where burnout came from. Not from doing too much, but from trying to carry what the structure itself couldn’t support.

Eventually I stopped trying to make those situations work and focused on what was actually causing the problem.

That’s where my work comes from.

When I look at something, I’m not focused on what it’s supposed to be. I’m looking at what it can actually sustain.

That tends to change things quickly.

You see where effort is covering a structural issue, why something keeps breaking in the same place, what doesn’t need to be fixed, and what won’t work no matter how much you adjust it.

From there, decisions get a lot simpler and can be made faster.

Sovran Wellth is the system I built to make that visible, so it’s not just something I can see.

I don’t give people answers. I help them see what’s actually going on, so they can make decisions based on that.

If you’re responsible for a decision, a team, or a piece of work and it’s not delivering what it’s supposed to, even though on paper it should be, fill out the form below to connect with Nicole.