The Teachers Along the Way | Brooke Ranvek

An unexpected journey through mentorship, mastery, business, and the long way home to my own leadership.

There's something about looking back on your life and realizing that what you spent years searching for was something you already had.

Not because there wasn't more to learn.

Not because the years in between were wasted.

But because sometimes you have to go out into the world, experience what isn't yours, question everything you thought you knew, and live enough life to recognize the value of what was there all along.

That's been one of the greatest revelations of my professional journey.

And there's a woman who has played a significant role in that story.

Her name is Carey Peters.

You may have never heard of her. And that's perfectly fine. But if you've ever wondered what it looks like to take something you're passionate about and build a real body of work around it, I think you'll appreciate why I'm sharing this.

Because this isn't just a story about Carey.

It's a story about what happens when someone teaches you something that changes the trajectory of your life, and it takes you years to understand just how much.

The woman who taught me how to turn transformation into a system

I first entered the world of Health Coach Institute in 2017.

Carey Peters and Stacey Morgenstern had built something I found extraordinary. An educational experience that didn't just teach people what coaching was. It taught them how to coach, how to build a business, and how to turn what they loved into work that could make a meaningful difference in other people's lives.

And the beautiful part?

They had actually done it themselves.

They weren't simply teaching theories about what might work.

They had created businesses, tested systems, gathered experience, refined what worked, and built an educational model around it.

That's what caught my attention.

I've always been fascinated by people who create something from nothing. I love hearing their stories. I love discovering what made them come alive, what challenged them, and how they figured things out.

But I especially love when someone can show me HOW something works.

Not just tell me that it does.

And that's what I found in Carey's teaching.

My first training lasted six months. I spent another six months coaching before entering a yearlong mastery program, which included an in-person retreat.

I later completed an additional ten-week training focused on coaching other coaches through the methodology and had the opportunity to spend approximately six weeks coaching within HCI.

I wasn't ultimately selected to continue in that role.

At the time, that was another experience to process. Looking back, I can appreciate that the direction I was being invited to take might not have been the one I was meant to continue following.

Funny how life works.

Because what I received from those years of education was something I would spend much of the next decade developing into my own body of work.

I can still remember putting that piece of paper on the floor

Of all the things I learned, there's one experience I keep coming back to.

We were learning how to create a transformational system.

Not by sitting down and intellectually inventing a fancy methodology.

By experiencing it.

The exercise was beautifully simple.

Write down the first step of a transformational process on a piece of paper.

Place it on the floor.

Then physically step onto it.

Stand there.

Feel what it's like to be in that step.

And from that place, ask yourself what needs to happen next.

Not what sounds impressive.

Not what someone else says should happen.

What is the next natural step in the process?

Then write that step on another piece of paper, place it in front of you, and physically step forward.

And continue.

I cannot tell you how significant that experience became for me.

Because suddenly, a process wasn't just something I understood intellectually.

I could experience it in my body.

I could move through it.

I could notice what happened at each stage.

And I could begin recognizing patterns.

That was one of the foundational experiences that eventually gave birth to my own signature process inside Beauty Code Way®.

Vision. Awareness. Connection. Action.

VACA.

Four steps I could return to again and again.

A repeatable pathway for exploring what someone wants, what they're experiencing, what patterns are influencing their choices, and what meaningful action becomes available next.

And the more I lived it, the more I recognized that the same process could be applied across so many different areas of life.

Relationships.

Health.

Business.

Money.

Identity.

Purpose.

The circumstances change. The individual changes. The patterns may be different.

But the process gives us a way to observe what's happening, make sense of our experience, and practice something new.

Over time, I began building upon that foundation through the work I was developing around beliefs, behaviors, and identity.

Eventually, that became part of the Beauty Code Way® methodology, the Rewire B4™ framework of Brain, Body, Beliefs, and Beauty, and the Pathway to Purpose experience.

I didn't know all of that when I first stood on that piece of paper.

I just knew something about it made sense.

And I kept going.

What happens when the school ends?

Here's something I don't think people talk about enough when it comes to professional development.

What happens after you've completed the training?

You've learned the skills.

You've practiced the methods.

You've earned the certifications.

You've experienced tremendous personal growth.

And then one day, the structured experience is complete.

Now what?

I remember that feeling.

And I know I wasn't the only one.

There can be this strange moment when you realize the people who have been guiding you aren't necessarily going to keep walking beside you forever.

But something Carey taught us from the beginning continued to stay with me.

You can only take someone as far as you've gone yourself.

That teaching became a personal standard for me.

Not a statement about how many certifications I needed or how many impressive experiences I could accumulate.

A question of integrity.

How deeply was I willing to live the work I wanted to bring into the world?

How far was I willing to explore my own patterns, beliefs, relationships, and identity?

And could I continue developing myself even when there wasn't another class telling me what to do next?

I wanted more.

Not necessarily more information.

More depth.

More lived experience.

More opportunities to understand the human patterns I had become so fascinated by.

And that desire took me on quite a journey.

The years I spent looking for something more

 

Over the years that followed, I invested somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000 in additional education, mentorship, and personal development beyond my original training.

I explored different methodologies.

Different teachers.

Different approaches to transformation, consciousness, relationships, business, and the human experience.

Some of those experiences were extraordinary.

Some challenged everything I thought I knew.

Others helped me recognize what wasn't aligned with the kind of work I wanted to do.

And through all of it, something kept happening.

I kept returning to the foundation I had learned years earlier.

The systems worked.

The coaching process worked.

The business principles worked.

When I returned to the structures I had learned and actually applied them, I repeatedly found them useful.

Which eventually brought me to an uncomfortable question.

If I already had systems that worked, why did I keep looking for something else?

That question took me somewhere deeper than business.

Because I began recognizing that sometimes I wasn't searching for another system.

I was searching for another version of myself who would feel comfortable being successful with the system I already had.

There's a difference.

And I needed to live enough life to recognize it.

I didn't want to be successful at something that wasn't mine

I've experienced success in business before.

I've also experienced what it's like to participate in business environments where the methods being taught didn't always feel aligned with the relationships I wanted to have.

Network marketing was one of those experiences.

I loved meeting people.

I loved hearing their stories.

I loved learning about their businesses, their families, their dreams, and the things that made them come alive.

But somewhere along the way, I became uncomfortable with how often those relationships were approached with an agenda.

And the uncomfortable truth?

I had learned to participate in that, too.

I knew how to have conversations designed to lead someone toward a particular outcome.

I understood the strategies.

I understood the psychology.

But I didn't always like who I was becoming while using them.

And eventually I had to ask myself a question that would change the way I approached my own business.

Who do I want to be while I'm doing the work I love?

Not just how successful do I want to become.

Not just how much money do I want to make.

Not just how many people can I reach.

Who do I want to be in the experience of creating it?

Because I didn't want to keep building something that required me to move further away from myself.

Even if it worked.

Especially if it worked.

So I continued exploring.

I continued developing Beauty Code Way.

I continued living the work.

And in many ways, I gave myself permission to grow into the woman who could finally lead it.

The work that was asking to be born

One of the most meaningful parts of that journey has been the development of my Birthright Restoration work.

I've been drawn to exploring the earliest experiences of human life, the relationships that shape us, and the ways our beliefs about ourselves can develop long before we consciously recognize them.

That curiosity has taken me into years of study, contemplation, personal practice, and experiential work.

And it's become an important part of the advanced work I am developing through Beauty Code Way.

I didn't abandon the foundations I learned in my original coaching education.

I expanded upon them.

I brought my own experiences into them.

I explored how to help women recognize the relationship between their history, their present patterns, and the possibilities they may not yet be allowing themselves to consider.

And I began recognizing something about my own leadership.

I wasn't here to become another version of Carey Peters.

I wasn't here to recreate Health Coach Institute.

I was here to take what I had learned, honor the people who taught me, and bring my own contribution into the world.

Which brings me to the most fascinating part of this entire story.

Coming full circle

 

Recently, I've been watching Carey step into another chapter of her professional life.

After years of building, leading, and helping grow successful coaching businesses, she's now bringing her experience into private executive coaching and strategic guidance for founders and leaders.

And watching that unfold has been incredibly meaningful for me.

Because I'm seeing someone who taught me how to build a business continue evolving in her own relationship with leadership.

She's working in an arena that reflects the scale of business she has lived and led.

And I'm recognizing something about my own.

I don't need to be operating in the same arena for my work to matter.

I don't need to have built a multimillion-dollar company to recognize the value of a transformational experience with one woman.

I don't need to tell the biggest story.

I don't need to become the most influential person in the room.

I get to contribute where I'm aligned.

And she gets to contribute where she's aligned.

Both matter.

Both require leadership.

Both involve human beings navigating decisions, identities, relationships, and possibilities.

And perhaps that's one of the greatest gifts of a truly meaningful mentor.

Eventually, you stop needing to become like them and begin recognizing what their example makes possible for you.

I look at Carey now and see a woman continuing to bring her experience into form.

And I look at what I've spent these years creating and recognize that I'm doing the same thing.

Not at the same scale.

Not with the same business model.

Not with the same life experiences.

But with the same fundamental understanding that what we live, learn, practice, and refine can become something valuable to share.

And I find that incredibly exciting.

The answer was never another system

Here's what has been blowing my mind lately.

I spent years looking outside myself for something I thought I still needed.

Another certification.

Another methodology.

Another business strategy.

Another teacher who might have the missing piece.

And now, as I look at the Beauty Code Way® body of work I've created, I recognize how much of its foundation was already available to me back in 2017 and 2018.

The coaching skills.

The transformational processes.

The business structures.

The understanding of how to create an offer, communicate its value, invite people into an experience, and develop systems that can be repeated and refined.

It was there.

I had to become the woman who knew what to do with it.

And that's where forgiveness comes in.

Because I could look back and judge myself for all the time, money, and energy I spent searching.

Or I could recognize that those years gave me something I couldn't have purchased in a single program.

My own lived experience.

My own discernment.

My own relationship with leadership.

My own understanding of what integrity feels like when I'm actually living it.

And perhaps most importantly, the freedom to stop trying to build someone else's version of success.

What I know now

I love coaching.

I love meeting people.

I love hearing their stories.

I love discovering what makes someone come alive.

I love the moment a woman recognizes something about herself that she hadn't been able to see before.

And I love creating experiences that make those moments possible.

For years, I thought I needed to figure out how to market that work in a way that would make me successful.

Now I'm recognizing something much simpler.

I want to love what I'm doing so much that getting paid is not the reason I choose to do it.

That doesn't mean money doesn't matter.

It doesn't mean I don't value my time, my education, or the years I've devoted to this work.

It means I want the work itself to be something I would choose because I genuinely love doing it.

And I want to be able to invite another woman into that experience without needing to convince her that it's right for her.

That's the kind of business I want to build.

That's the kind of leader I want to be.

And that's the kind of relationship I want to have with the women who find their way into Beauty Code Way.

One where the work matters.

The woman matters.

And the relationship matters whether or not a transaction ever takes place.

Maybe the long way home was the whole point

 

I've spent a lot of my life studying what it means to forget who we are and what it takes to remember.

And I find it almost comical that my own professional journey has followed that very pattern.

I learned something.

I experienced it.

I went out into the world.

I questioned it.

I searched for more.

I tried other things.

I grew.

And eventually, I found my way back to what I already knew.

Only this time, I wasn't the same woman who had first learned it.

I had lived it.

And that's the difference.

Today, I can look at the systems Carey helped teach me, the work I've developed through Beauty Code Way, and the years of experiences that brought me here with an entirely different kind of appreciation.

For her leadership.

For the education.

For the people I've met.

For the opportunities that didn't unfold the way I expected.

For the money I invested.

For the times I walked away.

And for the woman who kept following her curiosity until she found her way back home.

I don't have to regret the journey to appreciate where it brought me.

And I don't have to become someone else to honor the people who helped me get here.

Maybe that's what mastery looks like for me now.

Not having all the answers.

Not reaching some final destination.

But recognizing that I have something meaningful in my hands, something I've spent years living and developing, and I'm finally available to bring it forward as myself.

And perhaps that's what I hope another woman recognizes in her own life, too.

That what she's searching for may not be as far away as she thinks.

That her experiences haven't been wasted.

That she doesn't have to become someone else to create something meaningful.

And that the next step might be as simple as putting one piece of paper on the floor, standing in the truth of where she is, and asking herself:

What comes next?

With love,

Founder, Beauty Code Way®
Remember. Rewire. Rise.

 

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