Please introduce yourself & your company
My name is Sope Agbelusi and I am the Founder and MD of MindsetShift
What is your morning routine?
I wake up around 5:30/6 and pray for about 30 minutes and then either go to the gym for an hour or workout out at home, shower and start my day around 8:30/9.00.
How did you become involved with the luxury fashion industry?
Honestly? I didn’t pitch them. Fashion found me through the podcast and content I was putting out. I’d worked with a CPO for a few years – she was at one of the luxury houses – and she was drowning. Not in work, in the gap between the image she was selling to the world and who she actually was. That tension was killing her.
Then along the way I did some work with Farfetch, post-pandemic when they were scaling fast. But here’s what I realised – fashion isn’t special in terms of the problems leaders face. The Intention Gap, that space between where you are and where you want to be, it shows up everywhere. Tech, finance, pharma, all of it. But in fashion, you can’t hide it. The pressure’s public, the pace is relentless, and your entire industry is built on performance. So that gap between performing and being? It costs faster. Shows up quicker. Breaks people harder.
That’s why the work I do there translates everywhere else.
What was your journey that led to your current role?
I was in commercial finance, leading turnaround projects, watching competent people fail. And I mean properly competent people. They knew what needed to happen. They just couldn’t execute it. They were leading on autopilot – reacting to everything instead of responding with intention. Performing leadership instead of actually leading.
And look, I was also tired. Tired of being the only one in too many rooms I found myself in. The only Black person. The only one asking different questions. I didn’t want to just fix broken companies anymore. I wanted to prevent leaders from breaking in the first place.
So I took this leap – and it was terrifying, by the way – and created MindsetShift. Not to add more frameworks to people who are already drowning in noise, but to close that gap. The gap between what they already know and what they actually do when the pressure’s on. Because behaviour change without mindset shift? Doesn’t stick. It just doesn’t.
I built the 3U Framework – Unlearn, Unlock, Unleash – because I kept seeing the same pattern repeat. And I wanted to challenge the traditional executive coaching model because, honestly, most of it is theatre. Feels good in the room, changes absolutely nothing when people go back to their desks on Monday.
What is your main responsibility?
It’s a mix, honestly. Running the business, working directly with clients, and delivery. So I’m both in the business and on the business, which can be a lot some weeks.
On the delivery side, my main responsibility is closing The Intention Gap for senior executives and founders who are scaling. And what I’ve learned is that most of them don’t know they’re in it. They arrive telling me their team won’t perform, or their strategy won’t land, or they’re exhausted in a way a holiday doesn’t fix. They’re describing symptoms. What’s actually happening is there’s a gap between who they intend to be as a leader and who they become when the pressure’s on. Between what they know and what they actually do when it costs them something. That gap is quiet. It’s invisible from the inside. But it’s expensive.
Part of what I do is create a space they haven’t had in years, maybe ever. A space where they don’t have to have the answer. Where they’re not the most senior person in the room who everyone is watching. Where they can think out loud without it becoming a decision someone acts on. Most leaders are surrounded by people they lead or people they report to. There’s no space in between that’s just for them. That absence is doing more damage than most of them realise.
So the work is closing that gap. Through executive coaching, leadership evolution programmes, workshops, whatever the situation needs. And if I’m the bottleneck, we can’t grow. If we can’t grow, we can’t reach the leaders who need this work. So building the infrastructure to scale this without losing what makes it effective, that’s the other half of the job.
What is your typical day/week like?
There isn’t one, which is deliberate. Some days I’m in coaching sessions with a CEO who’s scaling but losing themselves in the process. You know that thing where you’re succeeding but you feel like you’re dying inside? That. They’re hitting their numbers. Their board is happy. And privately they’re asking themselves if this is it. That’s The Intention Gap. It doesn’t always look like failure. Sometimes it looks like success that doesn’t fit anymore.
Some days I’m designing leadership programmes for organisations where everyone knows the strategy but no one can execute it. The strategy is brilliant. The people are capable. Nothing is moving. Classic Intention Gap.
Other days I’m working with the team, building infrastructure so this work can scale without losing the depth that makes it actually work. I’m also a thought partner to CPOs, founders navigating identity shifts, senior leaders who are effective but completely stuck and can’t tell anyone because they’re supposed to have the answers.
Then there’s content. Podcast, newsletter, Instagram. Because the work needs to reach beyond just the people I can sit in a room with. And I’m building the business itself. Partnerships with PE firms, strategic relationships, growth plans, all that.
But here’s what doesn’t change. Every conversation I have, whether it’s coaching or content or partnerships, it’s all about closing that gap. The space between where someone is and where they want to be. Everything connects back to that or it doesn’t make sense for me to be doing it.
What’s the best part of your role?
The moment someone stops performing and starts being. I mean really being themselves, not the version they think they need to be.
Like when a CPO realises they’ve been carrying everyone else’s anxiety and they have nowhere to put their own. Or a founder who understands why they’re brilliant at building product but completely invisible in the boardroom. Or a senior exec who finally – after years – names the exact pattern that’s kept them stuck.
That shift from fog to clarity. Watching someone reconnect with who they actually are beneath all the role stuff, the pressure, the proving. And then seeing them lead from that place. Their team feels it. The business outcomes shift. They achieve things they genuinely thought were impossible because they’re not fighting themselves anymore to get there.
That’s the work. That’s why I do this.
What’s the most challenging part of your job?
The toughest part is business development. We’re the medicine to the pain most leaders have but they don’t know they need a doctor. People aren’t searching for “help closing my Intention Gap” or “stop performing leadership,” right? They’re searching for “how to execute strategy” or “why won’t my team perform” or “how to lead through change.”
They’re describing symptoms, not the disease. So I have to help them see the gap exists before they even know they need someone to close it. And that part can be draining. Not because the work isn’t needed – it absolutely is – but because the need isn’t visible until it’s already cost them something. A key person left. They missed their targets. They’re burning out. By then, the cost is massive.
What is / are your most memorable work moment?
A few stand out for different reasons.
Nike was a bucket list moment. When I started MindsetShift I wrote them down as a dream client. Getting to deliver a leadership programme in Portland for their entire VP population globally, that one was personal before it was professional.
Google showed me the work could scale without losing its depth as we designed a first-of-its-kind programme across 17 countries, over 1,000 leaders. That mattered.
Shopify was a different kind of test. I supported their leadership team through a period of extraordinary growth, thousands of new people in a short space of time, and led half of their global coaching team. I also worked with companies joining Shopify, helping them integrate into a completely new environment. That’s not straightforward. Change at that pace, that complexity, it’s exactly what most organisations are navigating right now. Being inside that gave me a proving ground for everything I’d been building.
But some of the moments that sit with me most aren’t the big brand names. It’s the senior leaders I worked with early on, people like the first Black female equity partner at a major firm, trailblazers who were succeeding in rooms they were never meant to be in and carrying the weight of that alone. Working with people in those positions was part of why I left corporate. I wanted to be in the corner of people who needed that support and had nowhere to put it.
And then there are the clients who left careers they’d been in for 25, 30 years. Comfortable, successful, stuck. Watching them step into something completely new, shedding an identity they’d outgrown, and proving to themselves that it’s never too late to close the gap between who they’d been performing to be and who they actually are. That never gets old.
As a Black man in this space, this is not the norm. These moments aren’t just professional wins for me. They’re evidence that leading from who you actually are, not who you’re performing to be, isn’t just good for the person. It’s good for the business. That’s the real competitive advantage.
What advice would you give to anyone interested in the same profession?
It’s not going to be easy. I mean, let me just say that upfront. So be anchored in your why because that will carry you when no one’s calling, when prospects ghost you, when you’re wondering if you should just go back to the safe corporate job with the salary and the pension.
You don’t plant and harvest in the same season. Learn to be patient with the work. This stuff compounds, but slowly. The leaders who transform? They tell three other leaders. But that takes time. Sometimes years.
Be willing to challenge the industry’s assumptions about leadership. Most executive coaching is performance theatre. I’m serious. Inspiration without transformation. Most leadership development just adds more frameworks to people who are already overwhelmed. If you’re just replicating what already exists, you’re not needed. The market’s already full of that.
Your authenticity will stand out way more than following what everyone else is doing. Build from your lived experience. The
patterns you’ve seen. The cost you’ve paid. The gap you’ve closed in yourself first. That’s your authority. That’s what cuts through all the noise.
And understand this – you’re not here to make leadership more comfortable. You’re here to close the gap between where leaders are and where they want to be. That’s uncomfortable work. If you can’t hold that tension, if you need everyone to like you, this isn’t your lane. Find something else.