Cheryl Keates | From Altitude to Alignment
How a corporate high-flyer built My Life Team and a new standard of leadership where consciousness eclipses chaos
Cheryl Keates didn’t abandon success—she redefined it.
Before founding My Life Team and becoming one of roughly 2,500 Master Coaches worldwide, Cheryl lived the glossy highlight reel: Toronto-born, blue-collar grit, rocket-ship rises in corporate sales, then a bold leap to New York City with two suitcases and no plan. Soon she was running a private jet business, circling the globe with billionaires and boardroom legends, stacking five-star itineraries like passport stamps. It looked perfect. It felt incomplete.
“I was leading others without truly leading myself,” she says. “Success alone didn’t equal fulfillment.”
That realization detonated the old equation. Cheryl left the runway and turned inward—first to NYU for clinical psychology, then past therapy’s backward gaze toward a discipline that fused science with forward motion. Coaching didn’t feel like a new career; it felt like homecoming.
Origins: The Compass Within
Raised by a single mother in Toronto, Cheryl learned early to self-lead. Curiosity became her north star—visiting friends’ churches, studying how people think, noticing patterns. In corporate, that curiosity translated into elite performance; she was the one who could read a room, an individual, a moment. Yet the old undertow remained: You have more to do here. Go deeper.
In 1999, amid private aviation’s glitter and a personal relationship unraveling, she drew a line. “I was done with cycles of chaos,” she recalls. “I wanted truth, not just trophies.” She began the inner work—dismantling learned struggle, letting go of the compulsion to prove worth, replacing self-doubt with self-trust.
At NYU she realized traditional therapy wasn’t her path. “I’m results-oriented,” she says. “I wanted present-and-future change, not endless autopsies of the past.” The coaching track at Adler felt immediate and alive. Week one, she knew: This is it.
Craft: Science, Soul, and the Nervous System
Cheryl’s methodology is a layered architecture:
Rewire – cognitive tools that update the subconscious programs driving automatic thoughts and behaviors.
Regulate – somatic practices that stabilize the nervous system so clarity and choice are available under pressure.
Rise – identity work that upgrades who you believe yourself to be, aligning values with vision.
Receive – energetic calibration that opens you to the results you’re resourced to hold.
“Awareness without embodiment creates understanding, not change,” she says. “Transformation happens when who you know you are becomes who you be every day.”
Her flagship, the Top 1% Mastery Method: Rewire, Regulate, Rise, Receive, is a one-year container for elite leaders who are externally winning yet internally bracing. She also works privately 1:1, guides an Inner Circle for deep identity and frequency work, runs the BIGlife Design for vision and paradigm resets, and offers a six-week Breakthrough program for collapsing a specific problem at the subconscious level.
Clients arrive with metrics; they leave with mastery. Revenue and culture follow suit because the leader is no longer operating from contraction. “Most limits aren’t real,” Cheryl explains. “Time and resources can be real. But the belief, there’s not enough time—that’s a self-imposed limit. Once you see the invisible wall, it dissolves.”
Philosophy: Depth Over Hype
Cheryl’s work is a clean synthesis of neuroscience, positive psychology, emotional intelligence, and intuition. The spine of her approach is simple:
Awareness – See the pattern. Name it.
Choice – Pick a new response aligned with values and vision.
Trust – Hold the decision long enough for your nervous system to believe you.
Resistance, she says, is fear dressed as logic. “When you meet resistance with judgment, it hardens. When you meet it with curiosity, it becomes information. It shows you exactly what’s ready to evolve.”
She rejects the glamour of perpetual self-repair. “I no longer live as a woman under construction,” she says. “Growth continues—but from wholeness.” Her aim with clients is not to create dependency or drama, but to normalize calm effectiveness: power with peace.
The Three Acts
Act I — Corporate Ascent:
From Toronto’s blue-collar beginnings to top-performing sales leader. She learns discipline, communication, and how to create results on demand.
Act II — Private Aviation Perspective:
Entrepreneurship in the private jet world, global travel, intimate proximity to power. The view at 45,000 feet clarifies the truth: achievement without alignment is a quiet kind of exile.
Act III — Mastery & Meaning:
NYU, the pivot from therapy to coaching, and the rise of a practice that unites science, soul, and strategy. My Life Team becomes the vessel for a new leadership standard.
On the Work Itself: What Changes
A high-level executive enters Cheryl’s world burnt out, successful, and empty. They leave operating differently:
From pressure to presence — decisions slow to the speed of wisdom.
From perfection to precision — fewer moves, cleaner moves.
From performance to purpose — teams stop bracing and start believing.
From force to frequency — results arrive that the leader can actually hold.
“Mastery isn’t about doing more,” Cheryl says. “It’s about deepening. The Top 1% I serve isn’t just about net worth—it’s a state of being.”
Practices: How Cheryl Stays Resourced
“I’m a student first,” she says. Growth is daily, not episodic:
Breathwork & movement to clear static and ground energy.
Study to refine the mind.
Time in nature to return to coherence.
When old patterns whisper, she doesn’t glorify the grind. “I pause before I push,” she says. “Rest isn’t the opposite of productivity—it’s the prerequisite of mastery.”
Boundaries are an act of leadership, not luxury. “The quality of my service is tied to the quality of my presence. Self-care is leadership maintenance.”
Vision: The Legacy Platform & The Page
Cheryl’s next chapter is bigger in reach, quieter in ego. She’s building a legacy platform to make world-class coaching more accessible while curating mentors who lead with embodiment over theatrics—depth over hype.
Two creative works are underway: a book on self-leadership and a screenplay that opens on Park Avenue in 1999 and closes by the sea—an arc from altitude to alignment. It reads like a cinematic mirror to her philosophy: the truest success is an inside job made visible.
In her long-view visualization, she’s living by the ocean with her beloved Maltese dogs, mentoring leaders and future coaches, convening rooms that change rooms. The external looks serene because the internal is sovereign.
What She Would Tell Her Younger Self
“Love yourself and lead yourself first. Everything else flows from there.”
The woman who once managed private jets now stewards something rarer: the inner sky of those steering companies, cultures, and change. Her clients don’t hire her to get louder. They hire her to get true.
And that’s the subtext of Cheryl Keates’ life’s work: You don’t have to trade soul for scale. You can build big and feel good. You can choose consciousness over chaos. You can return to the most resourced version of you—and from there, lead.
Published on: https://gossclub.com/cheryl-keates/
