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She never niched down. She never put on the professional mask. And she built one of Richmond’s most beloved creative communities.
MICHELLE MERCURIO · AUTHENTICIST & WITCHY COACH
Michelle Mercurio
michellemercurio.com
A brand strategist and coach who built an entire practice around two deceptively simple questions: who are you, and how do you relate to others?
Michelle Mercurio came out of corporate like so many women in the CEO Collective. She brought with her a background in communications, education, and human resources – and a deep conviction that the most powerful work in any business is always identity work. Who are you? What drives you? What do you actually put out into the world?
She spent five years as the host of Creative Mornings Richmond – stewarding a community that she helped transform into one that finally looks like the city it serves. She coaches executives, entrepreneurs, and people in significant life transitions. She leads witchy retreats and mindful events for people in the space between who they were and who they’re becoming. And she refuses to collapse any of it into a tight niche – because the through line has always been the same: who we are, and how we relate.
Integrate all the parts. Stop performing a narrower version of herself for the sake of marketing convention. Build the kind of business and community that reflects her actual values - and step into a new chapter with the clarity to know what to carry forward and what to release.
She was told to niche. She refused. And the business grew anyway.
Michelle’s story isn’t a traditional before-and-after. It’s a story about someone who has been doing the deep identity work all along – who resisted the “pick one persona” pressure at every turn – and who built something that only could have been built that way.
01
The Pressure To Be a Single, Neat Niche
Every piece of conventional marketing advice says the same thing: niche down, pick your avatar, create one persona, become known for one thing. Michelle has spent her career going against this advice – and watching the people around her exhaust themselves trying to squeeze into boxes that were never built for them. Her conviction: the work of identity is the work of integration, not subtraction. You don’t shrink your way to authenticity.
02
The Professional Mask that Costs Everything
Michelle describes it precisely: for years, she thought she had to show up as different personas depending on where she was. The executive version. The creative version. The coach version. The integration work – learning that all of those are just facets of one person – was the hardest thing she’s ever done. And it’s the work she now does with every client she touches: helping people stop performing a version of themselves and start showing up as themselves, in every room.
03
Building Community in a City of Silos
When Michelle took over Creative Mornings Richmond, she looked around the room and didn’t see Richmond. She saw a particular kind of creativity – same races, same career paths, same age range. She spent five years deliberately, patiently, intentionally building a community that looked different. Going to meet people rather than waiting for them to walk through the door. Asking what they actually needed. Not building something new when she could support something already growing. The result: a community people describe as finally looking like the city itself.
michelle mercurio · authenticist & witchy coach
What Michelle gives her clients and what the Collective gave her.
Michelle’s work and the CEO Collective’s work share a root: both start with values as lived infrastructure, not words on a list. Both ask who you actually are – not who you should perform for the room. And both understand that growth is a spiral, not a ladder. Being in a room that operates from those same premises gave Michelle something most rooms don’t: a place to be herself without explanation.
Principle 01
Values Are Stories, Not Word Banks
Michelle describes working with a room full of financial executives who all listed “transparency” as a core value – only to discover each person meant something completely different. One woman traced her commitment to transparency all the way back to watching her parents’ business get cheated. Same word, entirely different story. Michelle’s work – and the CEO Collective’s – pushes past the word into the story behind it. That’s where the actual differentiation lives. That’s where the actual person lives.
Principle 02
Growth Is a Spiral – Not a Ladder
Michelle’s reframe of the “growth” conversation is one of the most important: we are taught that growth goes up. That it’s a trajectory. That going back to the same place you were before means you’ve lost. Michelle sees it differently: growth is a spiral. You revisit the same coordinates, but you are never the same person revisiting them. The CEO Collective’s own approach – rooted in rhythm, quarterly reflection, and sustainable pace – operationalizes exactly this. It’s not about the climb. It’s about the next level of becoming.
Principle 03
Be a Villager, Not Just a Village Founder
What it looks like when someone finally stops performing and starts showing up.
Everything I do comes back to two things: who we are, and how we relate to one another. That’s the crux of the branding work, the coaching work, the community work, the tarot readings, the retreats for people in transition. The through line is always the same. I resisted the pressure to niche that down for a long time – and I still do. Because when you try to become just one thing in order to fit in, you give up the thing that makes you actually worth finding.
I spent years thinking I had to be different personas depending on where I was. The corporate version of me here. The creative version there. The integration work – learning that those weren’t different people, just different facets of the same person – was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And now it’s the thing I walk clients through every day. The shoes are the shoes. There is no separate professional version of you that’s going to show up when you put them on.
"When you are in this place of finally getting to where you don't have to put on a mask or play a character anymore — and you can authentically be who you are — that's something completely different. That's the work."
Five years hosting Creative Mornings Richmond taught me something concrete: if you want a community to look like the people you say you serve, you have to actively go meet them. You can’t build it and wait. You have to ask what they actually need. You have to be willing to join things instead of always starting things. You have to be a villager, not just a village founder.
The CEO Collective has been part of my own integration – a room that operates from the same values underneath the surface that I try to operate from. Values-first. Community over competition. Life before business. A spiral instead of a ladder. You don’t find that in many rooms. When you do, you recognize it immediately.
What’s different now
Michelle’s biggest wins.
Result 01
Five Years of Creative Mornings RVA — A Community That Looks Like Richmond
Result 02
The Integration: All the Facets, One Person
Result 03
A New Chapter In the Liminal Space, Building What’s Next
Result 04
Permission to Do Less — and Be More
Featured Episode · Promote Yourself to CEO®
Who Are You Really — And How Does That Change Your Business?
Michelle Mercurio joins Racheal for one of the most philosophically rich conversations in the podcast’s history – about authentic identity, the pressure to niche that quietly kills businesses, how growth works more like a spiral than a ladder, and what it actually takes to build a community that looks like the people you say you serve.
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You don’t have to climb someone else’s definition of up. The CEO Collective is built for women who are done performing a narrower version of themselves – and ready to build a business from their actual values, their actual strengths, and who they actually are. Come as you are. Build what only you can build.