Nikki Bruno, an Epic Comeback Coach, works with adults 30-60 recovering from divorce, illness, or loss. She developed a 10-step framework based on 160 interviews with people who staged comebacks across athletics, business, and personal trauma. Bruno distinguishes coaching from therapy: it's for people ready to design a new future, not those still in early emotional healing.
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Hey, this is Scott Levin, Chief Peacekeeper and Attorney Mediator, and I am here today with Nikki Bruno. Hi Nikki, how are you?
What's going on, Scott? Happy to be here.
Thank you for being here. And you are the Epic Comeback, right?
Yeah, I'm the Epic— I am, I'm the Epic Comeback Coach. Yes, I am. I am an empowerment coach. And I help people to stage epic comebacks in their life from life-shattering experiences such as divorce, especially high-conflict divorce, illness such as cancer, or some kind of loss. Basically, my clients are rockstar individuals who generally they're in between, let's say, their 30s and their 60s. And they have been sidelined, absolutely sidelined by some kind of crisis, some kind of trauma. really at the peak of their life. And so I have— I've become an expert on how to move from a very low, dark, difficult, hellish place to being the architect of your own life and really learning from the trauma that you've gone through and using the trauma as really as a source of empowerment for creating the next chapter of your life in a really amazing way.
That's really interesting. So one question I have is, do you see people mainly right when they're— that they're trying to recover from the thing that's happened? Or is there sometimes a period of delay between, you know, the end of a divorce and when they are reaching out to you?
Yes, it's really both, Scott. I would say that most of my clients start working with me when they've had a certain kind of period of healing. in the wake of the traumatic event or in the wake of the crisis where they've reached a place where they either can see the light at the end of the tunnel or they've already kind of reached that light at the end of the tunnel. So people tend to— I mean, the simplest answer is people work with me as a coach when they're ready to take action, when they're ready to move on and to build a vision of their future. And I know for myself, the traumatic experience I went through was a high-conflict divorce, and it lasted 3 years. And I wasn't ready to work with somebody like me until the legal process of the divorce was still going on. But I had separate— my husband at the time and I had separated and I had my own home and I had had maybe 9 months or so to really kind of suck my thumb and recover a bit.
And so how do you know when you're ready for the epic comeback? How do you know when you're ready to get coaching advice?
You're ready when you feel like it's time for a change. You feel like you're ready to you feel like you're ready to say, okay, that is going to now be in my past starting right now. There's often a turning point. And I've studied hundreds of case studies of comebacks. And there's this turning point. And I can't say exactly how that happens. I think it's just sort of a combination of grace and the combination of kind of getting frustrated with being in the pit for a long time, right? I mean, we're talking about 1 to 3 years of trauma that has happened. So It's just this readiness where you're saying, I'm going to leave this behind and I'm going to get my mojo back. I'm going to start taking action to move on in my life. And that's when it's time for a coach to enter. Up until that point, the best expert to work with really is a therapist who's going to help you heal.
Yeah, that's it. So in terms of coaching, I mean, we all get coaching. When I was young, I got tennis coaching. I had tutors, I had SAT coaching help. Why do you think when we enter adulthood, and I don't know if I'm quite there yet, why do you think that we, that people, adults kind of stray away from coaching even though we, you know, a lot of us grew up with that help when in our younger years?
No, I love that question, Scott. And what occurred to me immediately is that I think a lot of people don't seek out coaching because now it costs a lot of money. When you're growing up, I mean, depending on what sports— what sport you do, but if it's relating to your school, your college, or whatever, you know, you're not paying extra money for it. And these days— the other thing is that for, I think, the generation before ours, there were a lot of— there was a lot more mentorship that was built into people's professions and built into the companies they were part of. And that's really gone away in large part. Certainly, I will say, for my generation. And so these days, you know, it costs you thousands of dollars to work with a coach if you want to work with somebody who's really good and really excellent and who's actually coaching as opposed to just saying that they're a coach. You know, you have to be educated and trained in the mode of coaching. And unfortunately, within the coaching industry, you don't have to have— you're not required to have a certain kind of license in order to say that you're a coach. So it's a combination of things, but I would say that The primary reason is probably financial. People don't— a lot of people aren't sort of, I want to say, enlightened to understand that investing in a coach is actually a financial investment. And it's a way to accelerate your progress toward your goals in a major, major, major way.
Yeah, that's— and when you say that you've studied, because you're right, there isn't necessarily like an overall, you know, requirement for being a coach. You know, lots of people can call themselves coaches for, you know, lots of different reasons. But you say you studied thousands or hundreds of epic comebacks to kind of understand what that really means. What sort of, you know, tell us a little bit about that, you know, education process.
Sure. I did a lot of reading. I still do. And also I have a podcast called the Epic Comeback Podcast, and my every single guest I have. I think it's been— I've interviewed probably now 160 different people who have epic comeback stories, who've been through every kind of trauma you can name. Again, from loss to divorce to loss of a child to different types of illnesses to terrorist bombings. I mean, I've talked to some people who've been through multiple types of trauma. And so it's from studying those, studying those cases. I've also studied athletic comebacks. corporate comebacks like Apple's. Celebrity comebacks, certainly, like somebody like Ellen DeGeneres who came out, basically lost her career. Nobody would touch her in Hollywood. And then look where she is today. No matter what you think of her personally, she has— she staged a major comeback. So what I did was while I was looking, while I was studying these people in these situations, I was asking 2 questions. Number one, what are the human qualities that it takes to stage a comeback? And number 2, what are the actions that people are taking? What's the actual pathway? And so I was generalizing from all of these case studies to create my methodology, which is called the Epic Comeback Journey. And it's a 10-step process that I give to my clients. This is my gift to my clients. I make it public. You know, I mean, it's no secret, the intellectual property of my coaching practice. And it's 10 steps. You know, you start here, you've been in hell, you have a period of time of healing. And you go through these 10 steps, not necessarily sequentially. And at the end, you've arrived. You've staged your comeback.
That's amazing. And so when people are in the middle of that process, are they experiencing emotion? Are they emotional? Are they on highs? Are they on lows? Tell us, like, over the course of that 10-step process, what can people expect to feel and do?
People can expect to— people can expect to do some sometimes difficult and hard internal work, which means very much telling the truth of what you've gone through and kind of going through this— one of the early stages of the process is called reckoning. And it's a time where you're assessing where you are. And you're kind of lining up, what do I have— what has happened here? What do I have stacked against me? What do I have in my corner? What are my skills, my superpowers, my strengths? And so emotionally, the process can be a bit all over the map because it's exhilarating. And it's also at the same time, you're really kind of putting up a mirror to yourself and to your experience. And you're taking some— you're taking responsibility for what's happened to you and for you and, you know, and in your life. So it's a process where it's a combination of envisioning your future and dreaming of what you really, really want, which can put you in an emotional state of gratitude and excitement and certainly nervousness and fear, alongside a process that can also be, it can be a bit of a slog. And I know we're running out of time, but it's, you know, it's what, I love what I do. I pinch myself.
You are, Nikki Bruno is truly amazing, everybody. She is a leader in this industry of coaching, the comeback, the epic comeback. I know her from the divorce world. where I'll be on calls with people and speaking to friends of mine, and they'll just bring up Nikki's name, you know, generally, and I'll be like, wow, that is someone that, you know, I need to know. And I appreciate you joining me today.
