“Life on a Journey Loop” with Marco Lamina & Michael Shehane
summary
This REAL Eyes Realize podcast episode with the dynamic duo of Marco Lamina and Michael Shehane highlights the journey they have fostered. Their aim is to create a tool to help leadership coaches and clients with transformation and empowered possibility. Their story is about two friends who took simultaneous leaps from security to purpose, united by a shared belief: that technology, especially AI, can amplify human wisdom without replacing human connection. Through their 8-year martial arts partnership, they also learned that mastery begins with seeing your blind spots … and that's exactly what their platform offers to the coaching profession. They are creating a ripple effect by democratizing transformational learning tools, helping coaches serve more people while preserving the sacred human relationships that make effective coaching work.
bio
Marco Lamina and Michael Shehane are co-founders of JourneyLoop, an AI-powered platform transforming professional coaching from an intuition-based practice into an evidence-based profession.
Marco brings 15 years of Silicon Valley software engineering experience and is an emerging AI implementation coach. After leaving corporate tech, he's now empowering educators and democratizing transformational learning through AI. He's also a martial arts practitioner (soon to be black belt!) and musician.
Michael is an executive coach with 10+ years of experience through his company InStride Leadership. With expertise in linguistics, organizational psychology, and learning theory, he's a university-level educator who discovered coaching's biggest challenge: coaches develop in isolation without systematic feedback. He's a Quantum Martial Arts black belt (3 years) and pioneer in using AI for coaching self-improvement.
The two met through martial arts in San Francisco. In 2024, both made simultaneous leaps—Marco left corporate after 9 years, Michael left his coaching agency to start InStride Leadership. When Michael uploaded his coaching transcripts to ChatGPT and discovered he was doing emotional labor FOR clients instead of teaching them emotional regulation, the vision for JourneyLoop was born.
Together, they're the only team that truly understands BOTH sides of AI-enhanced coaching: Marco's technical expertise meets Michael's coaching wisdom, united by martial arts principles of continuous improvement and "teachers as learners." Their mission: help coaches discover blind spots, eliminate admin burden, and make coaching more effective—while ensuring technology amplifies human connection, never replaces it.
Gift from Our Guest:
Journey Loop Coaching Reflection
Connect with Marco & Michael:
JourneyLoop.ai
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook/Meta
Marco's Blog
Michael's Blog
