Yancy Wright: From Burnout to Self-Leadership...Building Wellness, Resilience, and Sustainable Leadership

Episode notes

In this episode of the Breakfast Leadership Show , Michael sits down with Yancy to explore a powerful journey from career burnout to purpose-driven leadership. What began as a successful career in green building ultimately led to a health crisis that forced Yancy to confront the cost of overperformance, unconscious habits, and chronic self-neglect. That reckoning became the catalyst for creating Casa Alternavida, a leadership and wellness retreat center in Puerto Rico designed to help leaders reset, recalibrate, and lead sustainably. Yancy shares the real, unpolished reality behind the transition including a two-year remote phase-out from his corporate role, navigating hurricanes, financial strain, and the pandemic. Rather than derailing the mission, each disruption deepened his coaching capacity and clarified the work he was meant to do. The same burnout patterns that once drove his own collapse now show up repeatedly in the leaders who attend his retreats, reinforcing a simple truth: burnout is rarely a personal failure; it is a leadership signal.