I didn't know it at the time as it was more than ten years in the making, perhaps 20 if you count my entrance into the yogi-sphere, that I was on my own healing path - the kind of journey that ultimately leads you to seeking out wellness in every aspect of your life. This began with my uneducated but intentional experimentation with nutrition: how I chose to nourish my body, what lifestyle habits I adopted to optimise my health. With a career firmly planted in the commercial world, in agencies specialising in design, marketing and digital technology, I peered over from the edges of my professional life into my personal pursuits: what would that career be like being ‘inside’ the wellness industry? Between a commercial grounding and spiritual grounding, at first it seemed success in both couldn’t co-exist. Was this a precipice I was willing to cross? And the bigger question: what was my definition of success in that particular chapter of my life?

I had been practicing yoga since my early 20s and a natural progression that I saw friends around me accomplish was embarking on yoga teacher training. Many suggested to me to try the same path, but in the most loving of ways, I felt there were enough yoga teachers out there sharing their gifts. Although the class scripts were embedded in my psyche and I could effortlessly and informally guide friends through a yoga sequence, what I loved most was practicing presence in the moment - being in my body, in that shala - more sacred than the calling to qualify myself as a teacher of yoga. That being said, it’s not ruled out of my future endeavours. Ultimately, my practice as a yogi spans beyond the mat into how I show up for myself and others in everyday life.

So you could say I've been a wellness person for a long time but when (and how) did it become officially my career? I started producing nutrition content (a podcast) and collaborating with fitness professionals as a nutrition coach in 2024. This was soon after I graduated as a Functional Nutritionist - specifically, diploma certified as a functional nutritional therapy practitioner (FNTP). At the time I was studying nutrition, I joined as a founding member of Australia’s premier luxury private wellness club. I also married an incredibly talented wholefoods chef - my perfect mix of food lover and nutrition label decipherer. From there it only made sense that I bring all other facets of my ‘traditional’ career into alignment with my most real, ‘alternative’ and authentic life (and my obsession): nutritional balance that heals bodies, and in turn revitalises life from the inside out.

In early 2025, I landed at the centre of my own ikigai venn diagram, in the intersection of beauty and wellness: Ingestible Beauty, the “fourth pillar of the Beauty Industry” as described by WelleCo founder, Elle Macpherson. Beauty through wellness became my wellness industry niche. I adopted its guiding philosophy “wellness is the key to beauty”, plus, it merged perfectly with my own “living with vitality is true luxury”. I could express my feminine energy with conviction and allow wellness to run deeper than surface-level aesthetics.

In one fell swoop my career finally made perfect sense to me. I am obsessed with nutrition. I am obsessed with optimal function of the body. I am obsessed with radiating ageless youthfulness. I am obsessed with finding paths towards profitable, sustainable growth. Using the knowledge, tools and techniques I had cultivated over two decades. Blending head and heart, I was truly being of service. This is a purpose larger than my own wellness journey.

It was Steve Jobs who said: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path. And that will make all the difference.”

As a curious dot-connector, I’m not surprised this perspective resonates with me so deeply.

What I find interesting is that while web browsers remain firmly in place on people’s laptops and mobile devices, usage is being diluted and diverted, resulting in information retrieved through the lens of your preferred large language model (LLM).

When the ranked links disappear there is no longer a top-ranking spot. Where does all the decades of effort that business has put into Search Engine Optimisation go? Yes it still counts towards being visible by robots but these smarter species of robotic learners come with their own perspective of the world - they’re not just reading yours. And there’s no “I’m feeling lucky” button :( Your luck is made.

Where do brands go from here?

From here, brands need to think about their networks: their relationships with other brands, with publicity, media, and with creators. This is what counts in a world where we are now optimising for agents and generative engines alike a.k.a AEO (agentic engine optimisation) and GEO (generative engine optimisation). The principles are largely the same as SEO in that you need to build authority on the Internet. However, the game has changed in how you go about it. One of the minefields of AI answers inside your web browser is that machines don’t possess the nuanced, human understanding of the authenticity or the credibility of the source (at least not yet).

I’ve seen plenty of technological disruption over the 20 years of working in digital, which leads me to think about where consumer and human behaviour starts to evolve next.

1. Web discovery and agentic discovery merge. Similar to how we’ve become used to the omni-channel experience of accessing all parts of our digital life from any device or browser or application, but with the added layer of context and preferences and prediction of what an individual is seeking next. Information and products actually arrive under a cloak called Discovery but underneath are deeply shaped by the specific logic of the learning model.

2. Video content becomes the new search answer engine. Whether it’s YouTube or TikTok, active or passive search, both are fluent in the consumer language of video. YouTube specifically has clocked 20 years of content, right down to the most specific niche you could imagine, and users love its algorithm. It still counts for serendipitous moments and, unlike the meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram), it doesn’t lock users into an echo chamber of advertising. With Google’s release of “Ask YouTube” people now land on exact timestamps inside videos. This puts the nail in the coffin of traditional keyword search.

3. Media consumption habits are decluttered. I liken the Substack publishing platform to an older intellectual cousin of Instagram, Medium, and Twitter. You could say it’s similar to the way that Tumblr started out: you follow your specific opinion leaders, experts, and friends and you actually get to see their content in real time. You’re engaging online almost like humans do in the real (digitized) world. My hope is that it doesn’t turn into a bin fire like Twitter/X and that the community remains thoughtful and humane towards each other. Quite simply, Substack is refreshing. It declutters the mind as well as the visual cortex. And in a digital world crowded with all species of slop, the anti-slop nature of a platform like Substack allows consumers to practice discernment and conscious choices.

If I were to hedge my bets, here’s where I’d focus: Brand partnerships and creator relationships; YouTube as the new search engine; Substack the choice for conscious media consumption.