Ryan Wallace · Founder of Awarely · Creator of the iACT NOW Method
Why high performers flatline.
What's the one thing you want most, but can't seem to make yourself do?
What holds you back isn't motivation, willpower, or knowing what to do. It's your subconscious mind firing a false alarm that keeps you stuck. Awarely teaches you to catch those self-sabotaging thoughts and act while they're still firing.
The Action Gap
The distance between what you know you should do and what you actually do.
It shows up in the conversation you avoid, the decision you delay, the opportunity you overthink, and the work that never ships.
The Method
iACT NOW
A repeatable method for closing the gap between knowing and doing, especially when discomfort tells you to stop.
Intention
Set your intention before your old patterns decide how you show up.
Awareness
Catch the Code Red. You can't change patterns you can't see.
Conscious Choice
Choose the action that aligns with your intention.
Take Action
Take action while the Code Red is still firing.
The Vow
I ACT NOW.
I choose courage until I become who my dreams require.
5 Common Code Reds
They sound reasonable. That's what makes them powerful.
Code Reds don't always show up as obvious fear. More often, your subconscious predicts a negative outcome and gives you a perfectly reasonable reason to stay where you are instead of taking action toward the life you want.
Readiness
"I'm not ready yet."
Waiting to become the person action would create.
Busyness
"I'll get to it later."
Motion that protects you from movement.
Perfection
"It's not ready yet."
Making perfect the price of starting.
Self-Preservation
"This could cost me."
Protecting your status, security, or ego.
Loyalty
"I owe them."
Protecting an old commitment at the expense of a new intention.
What Awarely Delivers
Bring iACT NOW into the room.
Keynotes create the shift. Workshops build the skill. Coaching makes it personal. Every Awarely program is built around closing the gap between what people know and what they actually do.
Speaking
Keynotes for conferences, leadership summits, and sales kickoffs that show people why they get stuck, and how to move while resistance is still firing.
Workshops
Interactive half and full-day workshops and seminars that turn the method into a skill your team keeps using.
Coaching
Private executive coaching for leaders who want to close the gap over time, one-on-one.
Why it sticks
Action changes more than the outcome. It changes you.
Every time you act through a Code Red, you create evidence that you can do the thing you were avoiding. Repeated action turns that evidence into identity. What once felt uncomfortable becomes familiar. What once required courage becomes how you operate.
That is how change sticks.
Coming soon
iACT NOW: How Change Sticks
Knowing what to do was never the problem. Doing it when it's uncomfortable is.
iACT NOW closes that gap by revealing why capable people freeze at the moment of action and how repeated action outside your comfort zone builds an identity that makes change stick.
The complete method behind Ryan Wallace's keynote and workshops.
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Awarely Speaking
Keynotes with Ryan Wallace
Awarely delivers keynote and educational experiences designed to close the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it.
Built around the iACT NOW Method, Ryan's signature keynote reveals why capable, driven people can still freeze at the moment of action. Audiences learn to recognize the subconscious Code Reds that keep them stuck and take intentional action even while the internal alarm is still firing.
Your audience leaves with more than inspiration. They leave with a practical method they can use at their desks, with their teams, toward their biggest goals, and in the moments when something inside them says stop.
The signature keynote
Why High Performers Flatline and How to Close the Action Gap
Breakout
A focused introduction to the Action Gap, the core reframe, and one practical tool the room puts to work live. Designed for conference breakouts and shorter programming.
Keynote
The complete keynote experience. Ryan unpacks the flatline reframe, the five Code Red traps, and the iACT NOW Method through practical tools and real stories, including his experience during the Hawaii missile alert.
Extended Keynote
The full keynote with deeper storytelling, more time inside each Code Red trap, greater audience application, and extended Q&A. Designed for events that want the complete iACT NOW experience.
Want the room to actually practice the method, not just hear it? That is the Awarely workshop, where people run iACT NOW on their own challenge and leave with a plan.
The Speaker
Ryan Wallace
Ryan Wallace is the founder of Awarely and creator of the iACT NOW Method. Across a 22-year corporate career spanning pharmaceutical marketing, enterprise AI sales, and executive leadership, he served as an Executive Director of Marketing and closed multimillion-dollar enterprise deals. He spent those years getting caught by the same resistance he now teaches others to recognize.
Ryan doesn't believe motivation is the problem. His work focuses on the hidden Code Red alarms that cause capable, driven people to hesitate, avoid, rationalize, and retreat from what they already know they should do. He teaches audiences to catch the alarm, recognize the pattern, choose a response aligned with their intention, and act while resistance is still firing.
Ryan is a certified executive coach through Fielding Graduate University's ICF-accredited Certificate in Evidence Based Coaching, a graduate-level program grounded in leadership, psychology, and the neuroscience of behavior change. He earned a BA from the University of Mississippi and an MBA from Arizona State University. Raised in New Orleans, he has twice traveled to Uganda to install water wells.
Awarely speaking programs are provided by Awarely.
Awarely Workshops & Seminars
Training that turns insight into action.
Awarely workshops turn iACT NOW from something people understand into something they can use under pressure. Participants apply the method to real decisions, conversations, and patterns, not hypothetical exercises, and leave knowing how to run it when their own Code Reds fire.
Upcoming Events
See Ryan live in Raleigh.
Ryan is presenting "When Something Inside You Says Stop" at Souly Holistic. Same talk, two times, so you can pick the one that fits.
Evening session
7:00 to 9:00 PM · Souly Holistic, 5540 McNeely Drive, Suite 101, Raleigh.
Lunch session
12:00 to 2:00 PM · Souly Holistic, 5540 McNeely Drive, Suite 101, Raleigh.
The iACT NOW Workshop
Ryan introduced participants to the Code Red framework and the iACT NOW Method through live exercises and personal pattern identification. They left with an action plan, not just notes.
Bring this workshop to your team
Tell us about your team and we'll design a session that fits.
The iACT NOW Workshop
Learn the framework. Identify your Code Reds and traps. Apply iACT NOW to a real challenge. Practice responding differently while resistance is present. Best for teams learning the method for the first time.
Breaking the Patterns
A deeper immersion into Readiness, Busyness, Perfection, Self-Preservation, and Loyalty, how each pattern disguises avoidance as good judgment, and how to interrupt it. Participants leave with personal pattern recognition, repeated practice, and a concrete plan for what changes next.
Team Action Gap Session
Where does your team already know what needs to happen, but still isn't doing it? This facilitated session surfaces the shared patterns behind stalled decisions, avoided conversations, slow execution, and unspoken friction, then creates a common language and accountability structure for moving forward.
Public & Virtual Seminars
Live and online sessions for individual professionals who want the method without a corporate sponsor.
Awarely classes, seminars, conferences, and workshops are conducted by Awarely.
Awarely Executive Coaching
Close the gap between knowing and doing, one leader at a time.
Private, one-on-one coaching for high performers who have hit a ceiling that has nothing to do with skill.
Some leaders look successful from the outside while privately knowing they're capable of more.
The problem usually isn't another skill they need to learn. It's a pattern they need to see.
What it looks like
It isn't a knowledge problem. It's the gap between what they know and what they do. Awarely coaching helps leaders see the patterns they can't see from inside them, make more conscious choices, and build new ways of operating through repeated action and accountability.
Start with a chemistry call
Coaching begins with a conversation. We'll tell you honestly whether it's the right match.
The engagement
Virtual, confidential, and built around outcomes.
Structured around the outcomes the leader and sponsor set at the start.
Break the Pattern
Focused work on one stuck decision, transition, behavior, or leadership pattern.
Change the Way You Operate
Enough time to identify recurring patterns, practice new responses, and turn insight into a different way of leading.
Build the New Baseline
For significant leadership transitions or deeper behavioral change where the goal is not simply solving a problem, but changing how the leader operates.
Awarely executive coaching is provided by Awarely.
Awarely for Meeting Planners
Make the decision to book Ryan easy.
Program details, audience outcomes, A/V requirements, recording guidelines, and speaker materials, everything your team needs to evaluate the keynote and execute the event.
The Signature Keynote
Why High Performers Flatline and How to Close the Action Gap
Every organization has capable people operating below what their ability suggests.
They have the skill. They have the experience. They often know exactly what needs to happen. Yet decisions stall, hard conversations get avoided, and important work stays unfinished.
Ryan exposes the hidden Code Red alarms behind the Action Gap, and the five patterns that make avoidance look reasonable: Readiness, Busyness, Perfection, Self-Preservation, and Loyalty.
Anchored by Ryan's true experience during Hawaii's ballistic missile false alarm, the keynote gives audiences the iACT NOW Method: a practical way to respond differently when resistance fires.
Recognize the Trap
Identify which of the five patterns is driving the hesitation, and what it is costing you.
Separate Discomfort from Danger
Learn to recognize when the alarm is protecting you from a legitimate risk and when it is protecting you from growth.
Run iACT NOW
Use a repeatable method to set an intention, catch the Code Red, choose your response, and act while resistance is still present.
Simple A/V
A lavaliere microphone, plus a projector and screen for slides. If there is a head table, set it back two to three feet so Ryan can present in front of it. That is all a great session requires.
By written approval
The keynote is Ryan's proprietary work, so recording is not permitted without prior written consent. When it is approved, a professional handles the capture, Awarely receives the master within 30 days, use is limited to internal staff, no copies are sold, and nothing is posted publicly online. Tell us your recording needs early and we will work them out together.
Everything to brief your team
A one-sheet, full bio, a ready-to-read introduction, and a program details form, branded and current, ready to forward to your committee.
Awarely keynotes and educational programs are provided by Awarely.