AFLSE San Diego presents the Laurel Salon Series

Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Doors open 6:00-8:00 PM · Program begins 6:30 PM
Banker’s Hill, San Diego (RSVP for full details, Parking available)

Innerpreneurship - Mastering Your Inner Operating System to Kick Off the Lunar Year of the Fire Horse
 

We are delighted to feature: 

Jeff Ziegler

LSE alumnus | Coach | Author of "As Within, So Without - a 9-week Journey from Burnout to Alignment"

A new year doesn’t just ask for new goals. It asks for a new internal operating system.

February 17 marks the Chinese Lunar New Year and the start of the Year of the Fire Horse—a symbol of momentum, courage, independence and bold forward motion. Fire Horse years reward clarity, self-mastery and decisive action. They punish noise, ego and misalignment.

Which makes this Laurel Salon perfectly timed.

We welcome LSE alumnus Jeff Ziegler for an intimate conversation on Innerpreneurship—the idea that the most scalable advantage leaders and entrepreneurs can build is internal mastery. Because in volatile markets, complex careers and non-linear lives, strategy without inner alignment breaks down fast.

Jeff learned this the hard way. He built seven fortunes and lost eight. From the outside: successful entrepreneur, devoted husband, father of three. But in 2018, after his wife's death, the entire operating system collapsed. The breakdown came later—on a bathroom floor at 2 AM, unable to explain why none of the achievement frameworks that had built companies could answer a single question: What am I actually building toward?

Innerpreneurship didn't emerge from a business school or a mountaintop retreat. It came from necessity. From studying neuroscience at 3 AM because therapy wasn't enough. From tracking nervous system states with the same rigor once applied to revenue. From recognizing the pattern: your outer results can never exceed your inner capacity to sustain them. Not for long. Not without cost.

This session of Laurel Salon is about mastering the one system we were never formally taught: ourselves.

Jeff's work reframes leadership and entrepreneurship from the inside out—connecting mindset, energy, purpose and execution into a single operating model. Focused on five pillars (mind, nervous system, body, emotions, spirit), this work was created not in the abstract, but in the aftermath of loss and rebuilding, drawing from neuroscience, somatic practices, and direct experience. It's pragmatic, not performative. Reflective, not abstract.

This salon draws from the core arc of Innerpreneurship, structured around five themes that mirror the Lunar New Year reset:

• Inner Foundation
  How your internal state quietly drives external outcomes
   
• Mindset Transformation
  Identifying the invisible beliefs that cap growth
   
• Energy Alignment
  Why momentum isn’t about effort, but direction
   
• Purpose & Vision
  Clarifying what you are really building and why
   
• Implementation Blueprint
  Turning insight into sustainable action

No worksheets. No hype. Just sharp thinking, honest reflection and grounded conversation.

Why the Fire Horse year changes the stakes

Fire Horse years favor people who move with intentional speed.
They amplify leaders who know who they are — and expose those who don’t.

Jeff has lived both sides of that equation. He knows what happens when external achievement races ahead of internal foundation. When the façade looks flawless but the operating system is failing.

This salon is designed as a pause to recalibrate before accelerating. A chance to align ambition with inner clarity. A reset that goes deeper than resolutions—built from the lived understanding that sustainable success requires an architecture most of us were never taught to build.

Come curious. Leave clearer. 

At Laurel Salon, space is intentionally intimate. Curiosity is mandatory. Come ready to listen, reflect and rethink what’s possible together.

Laurel Salon is founded on the belief that conversation is an art — a force that illuminates and renews. Here, diverse voices meet across disciplines, where curiosity is celebrated and dialogue enriches both the individual and the community.

Hosted by LSE alumni: May Meere (MSc Behavioural Science) & Amanda Toombs (MSc Social Policy)
 

RSVPs necessary.

ABOUT OUR SPEAKER: 

Jeff Ziegler

LSE alumnus | Coach | Author of "As Within, So Without - a 9-week Journey from Burnout to Alignment"

Jeff Ziegler (BA UCSB ‘90, MA LSE ’91, MA Georgetown ’93, MPhil Cambridge ’94) is an executive coach, author of As Within, So Without, and creator of the Inner Mastery Method™. After decades in high-pressure tech, marketing and startup leadership roles—building seven fortunes and losing eight—he lost his wife in 2018. That loss forced a complete rebuild, becoming the foundation for his work: turning burned out entrepreneurs and executives into aligned high performers whose success is achieved from the inside out.