May 7, 2026 · Wyndham Garden, Manassas VA
The Forum Was A Success
Thank you to every leader, speaker, and partner who showed up to ignite something bigger than themselves.
The May 7, 2026 Forum
FUEL&FIRE
Forum
For business owners, executives, and professionals ready to get unstuck.
Brain stuck. Business stuck. Fourteen practitioners who fix exactly that.
One day of Intentional Intelligence. The morning gets your brain unstuck with practitioners who do brain work for a living. The afternoon gets your business unstuck with a team of experts who do business transformation for a living. You walk in stuck. You walk out clear.
Premise
Your brain drives your mind, your energy, and your body — your life and your business.
What drives your brain?
Two kinds of stuck. One day to get unstuck.
Most leaders carry both at once. The morning addresses one, the afternoon addresses the other, and the day ends with both moving again.
Your brain is stuck.
- You can feel the fog. You're sharp for an hour, gone for three.
- The energy you used to have for people, decisions, and ideas is rationed now.
- You've read the books. The mindset stuff doesn't stick because no one ever taught your brain how to work.
- You know something's off. You need help from someone who does this for a living.
Your business is stuck.
- Your calendar is full. Your pipeline isn't. Something's off and you can't quite name it.
- Everyone's talking about AI. You're not sure which tools move revenue and which ones just eat your weekends.
- You leave conferences with a notebook full of ideas and no team to help you run any of them.
- You need help from a team of people who do this for a living.
Intentional Intelligence is what happens when both halves get addressed in the same day, by the people who do this work.
Mary Benson Alphs. Builder of leaders and of businesses.
Mary is the Founder and Chief Strategist of BDI Leadership Network. She built BDI around a simple conviction: leaders are built and businesses are built the same way — by the right people working on the right things in the right room.
Fuel & Fire is what that conviction looks like twice a year. Every practitioner in the room is someone Mary has personally vetted, whose work she knows, whose clients she has watched be transformed. This is not a speaker lineup assembled by a booking agency. It is a room curated one person at a time, because your brain and your business are not two problems. They are one problem with two doors, and most leaders only have the key to one.
What comes out of that room is what every attendee said they wanted and rarely find: an NPS of 9.5, relationships that outlast the day, and insights that become implementation by the following Monday.
Fourteen practitioners. Two halves of the same transformation.
Intentional Intelligence is not a concept. It's what happens when people who do this work for a living put their hands on your brain and your business in the same day.
Two sessions.
One transformation.
Optimize your thinking in the morning. Execute with precision in the afternoon. One day. Two halves. Complete change.
Fuel Your Being
Mindset, brain optimization, and peak performance. Mary frames the day, Dr. Alexis establishes the cognitive baseline, three specialist breakouts take you into the body and the nervous system, and Matthew Newell lands the featured morning keynote. You close the morning inside Workshop One, building your own Insight, Implementation, Impact plan.
Mary Alphs · Dr. Alexis Epperly · Matthew & Carol Newell · Bryan DePhillip · Christie Pride · Greg Ballard · Jennifer Ruckner
Fire Up Your Business
AI, positioning, sales, and brand differentiation. Mary opens the afternoon and hands to Jim DiModica for the sales foundation, then returns for customer acquisition. Four specialist breakouts cover finance, learning, wealth strategy, and capital, Larry Fischer lands the featured AI keynote, and James Geisler closes the day with Mary on legacy and long-horizon vision.
Mary Alphs · Jim DiModica · Larry Fischer · James Geisler · Chris Peden · Theresa Willen · Sanjay & Meeta Patel
Optimize your thinking in the morning. Fire up your business in the afternoon. Leave with one plan that ties them together.
See the Full Hour-by-Hour Agenda →
The Lineup · 14 Speakers
Forum Speakers
Physicians, strategists, operators, and practitioners. The people who will build the plan with you — not just talk at you.
Want to see when each speaker takes the stage?
See the Full Hour-by-Hour Agenda →
Featured Keynotes
Two keynotes.
One throughline.
Brain in the morning. AI in the afternoon. Each keynote sets up the workshop that follows so the Game Plan you walk out with is built on stage, not guessed at later.
“Changing Your Brain: Proven Brain Optimization”
Co-founders of the Family Hope Center, authors of Healing Your Child's Brain, and practitioners to 20,000+ families across 34 countries. Matthew and Carol apply the principles of neuroplasticity to help adults achieve breakthroughs in cognition, focus, and performance — setting the foundation for the morning workshop.
“Intentional Intelligence: Let AI Do the Work So You Can Lead”
AI & Automation Strategist, founder of Internet Media Now. Larry takes the stage with a room that already knows where its bottlenecks are and shows exactly how AI takes the weight off — fuel for the afternoon workshop where the plan comes together.
See exactly where each keynote, breakout, and workshop lands across the day.
View the Full Day Agenda →
What Separates The Forum
Two Workshops.
One Plan. Yours.
Most conferences hand you notes. The Fuel & Fire Forum hands you a finished plan. You'll build a personalized Insight, Implementation, Impact document by hand, validate it with a subject matter expert, and sharpen it with AI — all before you walk out.
The science, the signal, the truth. Clarity on what actually drives your brain, your business, and the gap between them.
Your step-by-step plan on paper. A tailored roadmap for your business, not a stack of notes. Built to run the week you get home.
Measurable results. What happens after the room clears, the work begins, and the plan you built actually ships.
The Workshop Method
Hand. Expert. AI.
In that order.
This is where the Forum separates itself from every other conference. Your plan is your own work first, pressure-tested by an expert second, and only then accelerated by AI. That sequence is why it sticks.
Hand
You build the plan yourself, on paper, using the brain science and business principles delivered on stage. Pen. Page. Your business. No templates, no shortcuts.
Expert
A subject matter expert works the plan with you. Pressure-tests the thinking, challenges the sequence, catches what you can't see yet. Your plan gets sharper before AI ever touches it.
AI
Only now does AI enter the room. It refines, structures, and accelerates the plan you already built — turning insight into implementation at machine speed, without losing the humanity underneath it.
By the end of the day, you're holding a complete, personalized Insight, Implementation, Impact document — built by your own hand, validated by an expert, and sharpened by AI.
See What's Coming
Live from the room.
Hear From Our Community
Voices of Fuel & Fire
Leaders and partners share what the Fuel & Fire Forum means to them.
Around The Room · All Day
Table Partners.
Around the perimeter of the main room, Table Partners are ready to meet every attendee. Not passive sponsors — practitioners, founders, and experts whose tools, services, and new technologies complement every stage on the agenda. Dedicated networking time is built into the day so you can visit the Tables without missing a session.
New technologies, tools, and partner books to take home with you.
Introductions to solutions you've been quietly searching for.
Practitioners who can work the plan with you after the Forum.
Want a Table of your own? Tier-by-tier partnership opportunities, speaking slots, and breakout sessions are open now.
The cost of another year of almost.
Another year of almost-hitting the revenue goal. Another year of almost-getting the team aligned. Another year of almost-launching the thing you keep talking about on Sunday nights.
The leaders who break that pattern all do the same thing. They find a room where the right people, the right insights, and the right next step come together in the same day.
May 7 was that room.
Get the Replay →Couldn't Be In The Room?
Get The Replay.
Every main-stage session and both workshops — captured on May 7 and ready to stream on your own time.
Want to see exactly what was covered? See the Hour-by-Hour Agenda →
Fuel & Fire Access
For the leaders who couldn't be in the room but refuse to miss what happened in it.
Every main-stage session was recorded on May 7. The full day is yours to take in on your own schedule, and replay access stays open for 7 days from purchase so nothing slips by.
You weren't in the room, but you'll walk away with the same thinking, the same frameworks, and the same momentum the in-person attendees took home.
- Replay access to all main-stage sessions from May 7
- Both Morning and Afternoon Workshops
- 7 days of on-demand viewing from your purchase date
- Instant access link delivered by email
- Watch on any device, on your own schedule
7 days of on-demand viewing from your purchase date. All replay sales are final.
Before you count yourself in.
What does the day actually look like, hour by hour?
Is this for me if I'm a solopreneur?
Is this for me if I lead a team inside a larger company?
What does “personalized Game Plan” actually mean?
What if I can't make it that day?
What should I bring?
Parking? Dress code?
What's for lunch?
Is the Neuro Playground the same as the main event?
I'm on the fence. What should I do?
The fire is lit. The work continues.
On May 7, the room in Manassas filled with leaders, speakers, and partners who came to do the work — and the work doesn't stop when the lights come up. The replay is available so you can sit with the day on your own time, take what you need, and bring it back to your team.
If you missed the room, this is the next-best seat.
P.S. Replay access stays open for a limited window. Stay close — the Fall 2026 Forum is already taking shape.
Presented By
Breathe. Dream. Inspire.