As published by Exeleon Magazine "New Interviews", 9/15/2026
A fifth-generation entrepreneur, Susan built an international career in fashion before embarking on an entirely different professional chapter. Her work exposed her to markets and cultures across Asia, Europe, and the United States, shaping the cross-cultural perspective she would later bring to her coaching practice.
Today, as the Founder of The Sales Forum and The Marriage Forum, Susan has accumulated more than 75,000 coaching hours over 27 years, including thousands of pro bono sessions. Her work has taken her inside high-stakes business negotiations, stalled international ventures, leadership challenges, sales transformations, and deeply personal turning points.
In this conversation, Susan reflects on her entrepreneurial roots, the personal circumstances that redirected her career, the leadership lessons gained through decades of coaching, and why she believes commitment, more than potential, ultimately determines extraordinary results.
Susan, before becoming a coach, you built a successful career in New York’s fashion industry. How did that entrepreneurial journey begin, and what did it teach you about business?
I am a fifth-generation entrepreneur on both sides of my family, and our history has been unchanged for centuries. My success in fashion was launched by helpful people who became mentors.
My fashion company provided 57 trips to Asia and Europe. New York, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangkok, and Hong Kong were melting pots, while Paris, London, Milan, Rome, Tokyo, Taiwan, and Los Angeles had cultural identities that influenced opportunities. My thinking became cross-cultural, and when I founded The Sales Forum and The Marriage Forum, I created a worldwide clientele. My coaching modules have been used in 12 countries and by four cultural groups within the United States.
After generating $750 million in wholesale product sales in fashion, what prompted you to leave fashion and begin an entirely new chapter in coaching?
Throughout my life, the one constant has been a desire to understand how to transform suffering into success. I’m still at it.
Just as entrepreneurship was in my lineage, I inherited this calling to create a nonprofit. My maternal grandmother was President of a nonprofit for 25 years, raising millions to save families in dire straits. My father was a surgeon dedicated to his patients regardless of their financial resources.
I had built a successful fashion career but longed to show clients how to transform urgent situations and triumph over them. Then my husband began using steroids, my marriage became a disaster waiting to happen, and my attention shifted to survival. To save my own life, I developed tools and skills I never imagined I would need.
Once safe, I realized I had pivoted into a second career that had meaning for me. I committed myself to sharing those tools and skills so no one would ever have to endure what I had, nor struggle alone. I founded The Sales Forum and The Marriage Forum, Inc., and began what became my 27-year coaching career, with 75,000 coaching hours completed so far, including 10,000 pro bono sessions. For me, showing a client how to double or 4x her income is as exciting as a huge deal or my client’s $11 million negotiation savings.
Over 27 years and 75,000 coaching hours, what experiences have most shaped your approach to helping leaders achieve seemingly impossible results?
I learned early never to predict success based upon apparent advantages or disadvantages. The hunger to succeed is essential to every entrepreneur, corporate founder, and employee.
I coached two friends. One was beautiful, talented, charismatic, had an agent, and several small television roles. I remembered seeing her on television, and since she had been on camera for only three minutes, she seemed destined for stardom.
The other had been in neighborhood plays but had no acting career. However, she possessed determination, commitment, and support. She was a hard, hard worker who committed herself to mastering every skill I taught her, day after day after day.
Their family environments were different. The actress’s wealthy parents insisted she work in a restaurant two nights each week, exhausting her and interfering with auditions. Although her boyfriend earned millions, she refused to ask him for money and eventually left acting. By contrast, the other young woman’s father was dedicated to her success. She worked hard every day, stayed in coaching for a full year until she married, and followed through.
At my urging, she produced a short film and submitted it to film festivals, launching a film career. Then she learned my Heartspace® relationship skills, discovered a man who was perfect for her and she for him, married, and had a baby. Area after area of her life transformed.
We discover what prevents the desired outcome, identify overlooked opportunities, I provide the tools and skills, and we stay focused. One VP of Sales learned skills to align his partners who had refused to sell the company. Within a few months, they agreed to a $205 million acquisition offer because he learned how to motivate them.
Two best friends were working on an international project that had been stalled for eight years before they hired me. Within four months, they secured the 28 required signatures and completed Phase 1 of their $1 billion international project.
Potential does not predict outcomes. Commitment does. Almost everything is possible with the right tools, skills, and support.
You’ve coached CEOs, founders, and C-suite executives through major business and personal transformations. In your experience, what separates leaders who achieve extraordinary results from those who remain stuck?
Extraordinary results require mastery in four categories.
- Personal Mastery begins with self-soothing so leaders function optimally when pressure is greatest and remain consistent and persistent.
- Business Mastery means expertise in their industry, company, products, ideal customers or clients, unique selling proposition, and their role in the business’s success.
- Sales Mastery is essential because every company depends upon a customer or client saying “Yes.” Leaders must understand what others want, communicate value, create trust, recognize opportunities, and turn them into business.
- The fourth Mastery has two categories. For Entrepreneurs, it is Scalability: creating something distinctive with a unique selling point and a business that grows beyond their individual effort. For Corporate Executives, it is Corporate Mastery: knowing how to “dance between the raindrops” and work successfully with everyone from the Founder and CEO to the janitorial staff, plus every customer, client, organization, or joint venture partner. This requires understanding personalities, interests, agendas, expectations, power structures, and communication styles while producing results.
Your work blends business strategy with communication, emotional intelligence, and conflict prevention. How do these elements work together when you’re coaching a leader or organization?
The problem a client brings me is not necessarily the problem we need to solve. My first job is discovering what actually prevents the desired result. An apparent strategy problem may really be communication, an unresolved relationship, inability to persuade and inspire, or a missing skill.
The international project that had been stalled for eight years required my offering the principals the communication and mediation skills required to motivate and inspire 27 essential decision-makers. We changed the conversations and, as a result, within four months, all signatures were secured, and Phase 1 of this $1 billion project was completed.
Another client, a brilliant VP of Sales, had three partners who expected him to do all the lifting, heavy and otherwise. The only option was to sell the company, which all three had refused to do the previous year. However, when he learned motivation and mediation skills and adjusted his presentation, they agreed, and the company sold for $205 million during our coaching work.
There was a different Founder who believed that his company had a sales problem. However, I discovered that his “salesman” was a marketer who lacked sales skills and had closed no deals since joining the firm. I performed some HR functions and identified an ideal candidate with exceptional sales experience in his industry. We negotiated a substantial package dependent on salary plus commission. However, the “sales” problem was a personality clash that we discovered when the boss refused to accept a huge multi-million-dollar project because the buyer had been rude to him many years earlier. This eliminated a huge commission opportunity, and the talented new hire resigned. I had solved the apparent problem and uncovered the real one.
The most brilliant strategy will fail unless those implementing it communicate, create trust, prevent and resolve conflict, and maintain focus on the bottom line. I identify what stands between the client and the desired result, then provide the specific tools, skills, and strategy required to transform the situations that have been challenging.
You’ve developed 100 proprietary tools and skills across your programs. Which ones do you find yourself returning to most often when working with executives and entrepreneurs?
Self-soothing saved my life. I offer six options and always teach Brain-breathing© and Self-empathy so leaders function optimally when pressure is greatest.
Whole-Brain Thinking, based on my Herrmann Brain Dominance® training, allows clients to consider the five essential aspects of every business: creation and development, production, operations, sales, and finance, rather than relying solely on their natural strengths.
I teach The 6-Part Conversation© for Sales to everyone, not only sales teams, because motivating and inspiring cooperative outcomes is the cornerstone of every business. Part 6, The Close, provides the basics for mediating agreements, a necessity in corporate life.
What final message would you like to share with entrepreneurs and business leaders who are facing a challenge that seems impossible?
Almost anything is possible with the right tools, skills, and support.
I have learned that the solution to a seemingly “impossible problem” is usually hidden behind something else. Once we examine the key issues, we discover what has been overlooked, whether it’s a question no one has asked, a missing skill, or outside-the-box thinking that pivots the trajectory of a business or a life.
My purpose in offering a complimentary one-hour private Breakthrough Session is to allow everyone to see their career or personal life more clearly and identify how to solve a serious problem ASAP. I’m always excited when someone describes a challenge they haven’t solved. Together, we look for solutions that are hiding or have been overlooked. Because I offer 100 unique proven tools and skills, I can provide clients in countless fields and companies with the specific solutions they need to create extraordinary success.
