Frank Marinko.

Mindset Coach  ·  Perth, 1954  ·  Italy, now

I have spent thirty years sitting with people who are succeeding by every external measure — and quietly wondering whether any of it is pointing somewhere they actually chose.

Rome

I grew up the black sheep of a Croatian-Italian family in Western Australia. Marked from the beginning by the smell of salami and garlic and a surname nobody could pronounce. State judo champion at thirteen. Working the oilfields of Barrow Island at nineteen. The Silk Road across Asia at twenty. A decade of running from stillness until I ran far enough to understand what I was running from.

I rebuilt my life from bankruptcy at fifty. I addressed twenty years of unpaid tax, declared bankrupt, and started again — with integrity as the only asset that had survived. By 2004 I was in Melbourne, building an executive coaching practice that has lasted to this day. More than 20,000 hours of professional work across law firms, universities, forensic science organisations, executives, and individuals navigating the hardest moments of their lives.

In 2023 I was diagnosed with advanced oesophageal cancer. A ten-centimetre tumour. Five weeks of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Six hours of surgery. I woke in ICU and asked myself — for the first time without flinching — who I was if it ended there.

The twelve-month CT scan came back clear. I took two weeks off during my recovery. Not because I had to stop — because the work gave me purpose through the pain.

Vicki and I are doing something we have been thinking about for a long time. In early 2027 we will be based part of each year in Viterbo, in central Italy — a medieval city in the hills north of Rome that suits us in ways that are difficult to explain and unnecessary to justify.

We are not retiring. We are relocating our aliveness.

The work continues — with Joost de Langen, with whom I am deepening the ACT framework I have spent thirty years developing, and with individuals, couples, and people in later life who are asking the question I have never stopped asking myself: Is this a direction I am willing to keep choosing?

Italy is where Vicki and I will recharge, think clearly, walk slowly, and do the next chapter of the work. Whether that eventually means a property of our own there — we are open to it. For now, Viterbo is where we will find out what is still possible.

I intend to be thoroughly used up — not depleted, but expended — helping others live deliberately and die without regret.