Youth
Personal-development ideas began being adapted for younger audiences without treating young people as though they were incapable of understanding meaningful lessons.
The Story of Becoming The Better You
BTBY began because Brenda Ring Wood needed a stage. It grew because she kept making room for other people on it.
What became Becoming The Better You did not begin with a business plan, a national tour, or a vision of building a global organization. It began with a woman rebuilding her life and an opportunity she almost talked herself out of taking.
2018
Before there was BTBY,
there was a beginning again.
there was a beginning again.
2018–2019
The ticket she almost didn't use.
Before Becoming The Better You had a name, there was recovery, rebuilding, and a decision that almost never happened.
A year earlier, everything looked different.
Brenda Ring Wood was released from prison in 2018 and spent much of the following year recovering from cancer and other related health issues and rebuilding a life that looked very different from the one she had known before.
In 2019, she won a ticket to a speaker event led by Ruben West. Instead of being excited, Brenda started looking for reasons not to go. She told herself she didn't have anything appropriate to wear and wondered why anyone there would want to talk to her.
Her mother had a different opinion. She pushed Brenda to stop talking herself out of the opportunity and took her shopping for something to wear.
The Conversation That Mattered
Ruben helped Brenda see that the woman standing in front of him was not the same woman she kept punishing for her past.
The woman who almost stayed home eventually became the woman
creating rooms for other people.
Brenda being recognized in Kansas City, August 2023.
The ticket didn't create BTBY. It created a moment Brenda chose not to walk away from.
The First Stages
If no one will give you a stage, build one.
Brenda knew she had a story worth sharing. The harder part was finding people willing to look past her history long enough to let her tell it.
What started as a way to earn credibility became something bigger.
Brenda faced resistance when she tried to get onto other stages. Her past often arrived in the room before she did.
So instead of waiting indefinitely for someone else to decide she had earned the right to speak, she began creating opportunities of her own.
Those early events were not born from a grand plan to build an ecosystem. They were a way to create a room, share a message, build credibility, and prove that transformation could be more powerful than the label attached to someone's past.
The stage Brenda built for herself didn't stay hers for long.
The rooms were growing.
BTBY St. Louis, February 2023
Other people started stepping forward too.
Class winners, February 2023
→
What began as Brenda creating a place to tell her own story became a platform where other people could tell theirs.
The People Who Changed the Direction
One relationship led to another.
BTBY did not grow because Brenda followed a perfectly mapped plan. It grew because people entered the story, shared what they knew, opened doors, challenged ideas, and helped create something new.
RW
Ruben West
The relationship that began at the event Brenda almost skipped became one of the earliest catalysts in her rebuilding. Ruben challenged Brenda to stop defining herself only by what had already happened.
A different view of what was possible
TL
Terrance Leftridge
Terrance became part of the early event story and helped bring energy and structure to the stage as an MC. The rooms were beginning to feel less like a single speaker's opportunity and more like a shared experience.
The stage begins becoming a platform
AR
Anthony Russo
Anthony was introduced to Brenda as the vision around BTBY continued to grow. Together, they helped put on the very first BTBY Speaker Training, creating another way for people to move from having a story to learning how to share it effectively.
The first BTBY Speaker Training
KW
Kevin Wilson
Kevin came to speak at an early BTBY event and originally planned to leave afterward. He stayed. What he saw convinced him that Brenda was building something with more potential than a string of one-off events.
His challenge was simple: take BTBY to the next level and treat it like a real business.
Events begin evolving into an organization
RP
Regina Platt
Brenda and Regina shared a strong faith and a desire to create something that emphasized joy, love, testimony, and second chances. That relationship opened another distinct path within BTBY.
Safe In His Arms begins
IB
Isabel Camacho Black
Through Brenda's relationship with Isabel, another branch of the story began to form: a place built specifically around transformation, second chances, and the idea that a person's worst chapter does not have to become their final identity.
From Felon to Fabulous is born
CC
Coffee Cup Chuck Doyle
Chuck became another important connection in the growing network around BTBY, and one introduction in particular would help change the organization again.
Chuck introduces Brenda to John E. Avocado and Kenya Mester
J+K
John E. Avocado & Kenya Mester
John and Kenya brought additional coaching, operations, systems, business experience, and execution into the growing BTBY ecosystem. What had already expanded beyond Brenda's original stage now had more infrastructure behind it.
More structure, more programs, more capacity
BR
Brian K. Ramey
Brenda and Brian already had a relationship spanning more than twenty years, but Brian had intentionally kept his focus on being a single father while his youngest child was still in school. When the timing was finally right, Brenda finally got the yes.
Brian's sales and operational experience became another major piece of what the growing organization could build.
The business side gets stronger
Behind the stage, the organization was growing too.
People, planning, systems, and execution.
The network became part of the value.
BTBY book signing and community networking.
Each new relationship added something Brenda could not have built alone. BTBY was becoming less about one person's stage and more about what people could build together.
Beyond the Stage
The impact started leaving the room.
As BTBY grew, the work began showing up in places that had little to do with conference stages and everything to do with people, possibility, and community.
Growth meant creating opportunities for people who might not
otherwise find their way into a BTBY room.
Topeka schools, February 2024
The question started changing from "Who can we bring in?" to "Who can we reach?"
BTBY had begun as a way to create stages and opportunities, but growth brought a larger responsibility with it.
The same ideas being shared with adults about mindset, choices, second chances, confidence, and possibility could matter just as much in schools and youth programs.
That became part of the developing culture of BTBY: if growth creates access, then access should be shared.
Community
BTBY increasingly became something that happened outside formal events through service, conversations, relationships, and local involvement.
Stewardship
As the organization grew, so did the belief that growth carries a responsibility to create opportunities for other people.
BTBY was no longer only building rooms people could walk into. It was beginning to carry the work into rooms that were already there.
Building the Infrastructure
The branches were growing. The trunk had to get stronger.
By this point, BTBY was no longer one event, one speaker, or even one program. The ideas were multiplying. The next challenge was building enough structure to support them.
Growth needed more than good intentions.
As John E. Avocado, Kenya Mester, Brian K. Ramey, and others became more deeply involved, BTBY gained more of the operational capacity needed to turn ideas into repeatable programs, partnerships, events, and services.
Coaching, sales, operations, systems, event production, business experience, and implementation began working together behind the scenes.
This was also the period when the organization increasingly started thinking beyond "What can we create next?" and toward "How do we build this so it can keep growing?"
The vision was expanding. Now the organization needed the capacity to carry it.
More people began carrying the vision.
Different strengths. Shared direction.
BTBY was becoming bigger than any one person.
Team, partnerships, relationships, and reach.
Operations
More structure behind events, programs, logistics, partnerships, and the growing day-to-day work of BTBY.
Business
Business coaching, systems, sales, and strategy began becoming a more distinct part of the larger ecosystem.
Speaking
The original idea of creating stages continued evolving into speaker development, training, opportunity, and platform building.
Community
Relationships stopped being something around the work. They became part of how the work itself grew.
BTBY was no longer just creating opportunities. It was learning how to build an organization capable of creating more of them.
Expanding the Reach
Then the rooms started getting bigger.
What began as creating a place to be heard was becoming something much larger: new cities, new relationships, larger platforms, and opportunities that once would have seemed out of reach.
New Relationships
The network was expanding.
Relationships that once felt several rooms away were becoming part of the BTBY story.
New Stages
The work started traveling.
BTBY was moving beyond its original rooms and communities.
New Recognition
The story was being seen differently.
What had once closed doors was becoming part of the reason others opened.
Growth changed what seemed possible.
BTBY began appearing in new cities, on new stages, and in rooms with entrepreneurs, speakers, leaders, and people whose paths might never have crossed otherwise.
Each relationship created another possibility. Each opportunity created another connection. And each new room made the next room a little less impossible.
The goal was never simply to collect impressive names or bigger stages. The value was in what those relationships could create: access, education, collaboration, credibility, and opportunity for the people coming through BTBY.
01
Local
Build a room where people have an opportunity to be heard.
02
Regional
Carry the relationships, speakers, and message into new communities.
03
National
Build partnerships and platforms capable of reaching farther.
04
What's Next?
Keep opening doors, then help someone else walk through them.
The rooms got bigger. But the reason for walking into them stayed the same: create opportunities that did not exist before.
From Platform to Movement
Eventually, the room wasn't big enough.
The question was no longer whether BTBY could create an event. The question became how far the people, programs, partnerships, and opportunities being built around it could travel.
Becoming The Better You
One Idea
Help people recognize where they are, choose what comes next, and keep becoming.
BTBY On Tour
The platform began traveling into new cities, creating new stages, relationships, and communities.
BTBY Africa
What began in the United States started developing relationships and opportunities across the Atlantic.
More Ways to Serve
Speaking, business, youth, faith, transformation, education, and community developed into distinct paths.
More People Carrying It
BTBY increasingly became something built with people, rather than something simply presented to them.
The Mission Started Traveling
From one-off events to something repeatable.
The early BTBY events proved that people would gather around messages of growth, second chances, personal responsibility, connection, and possibility.
The next evolution was learning how to take that experience somewhere else and create it again.
New cities brought new audiences. New audiences brought new relationships. Those relationships created more speakers, partners, programs, and opportunities.
BTBY was becoming something that could travel without losing the reason it existed in the first place.
Then the vision crossed an ocean.
The development of BTBY Africa marked another turning point: an organization born from one woman's fight to rebuild credibility was beginning to create relationships, programs, and opportunities internationally.
Somewhere along the way, BTBY stopped being a series of events. It became a growing movement of people helping other people become what comes next.
Growth Wasn't Always Easy
As BTBY grew, it was tested too.
Growth attracts attention, opportunity, support, and sometimes resistance. BTBY experienced all of them.
The Choice
You cannot always control what people say about you. You can control what you build next.
The same philosophy BTBY teaches individuals became something the organization had to practice itself.
Not every chapter came with applause.
As BTBY became more visible, there were periods of criticism, efforts to damage its reputation, and attempts to strain relationships around the organization.
Those moments could have pulled the organization into endless arguments about what other people were saying or doing.
Instead, the focus remained on the work: keep relationships strong, keep commitments, keep serving people, and keep moving forward.
BTBY did not grow because every person agreed with it. It grew because enough people continued to believe the work was worth doing.
Keep Your Integrity
When your integrity is challenged, you still get to choose your response.
Brenda speaking in St. Louis in 2023. The lesson was not theoretical. It was something BTBY was learning to live.
Protect the Integrity
Make decisions that can still be defended when the emotion of the moment is gone.
Protect the Relationships
Do not let conflict become more important than the people, partnerships, and trust that took years to build.
Keep Building
The strongest answer to resistance was not retaliation. It was more work, more impact, and more opportunity.
Resistance became another chapter in the same lesson BTBY had been teaching from the beginning: your past and your circumstances matter, but they do not get to decide what you do next.
Still Becoming
The story is not finished.
BTBY has grown from one woman trying to rebuild credibility into a network of people, programs, partnerships, events, and opportunities reaching farther than anyone could have predicted at the beginning.
National Reach
BTBY continues carrying its events, speakers, relationships, and programs into new cities and communities.
Global Growth
BTBY Africa and international relationships are extending the vision beyond the borders where it began.
More Ways to Serve
Personal development, business, speaking, youth, faith, transformation, education, and community continue developing into distinct paths within the larger ecosystem.
More People Carrying It
What once depended almost entirely on Brenda now moves through a growing team, network, and community of people contributing their own experience and strengths.
Becoming is not something BTBY only teaches.
The organization itself has had to change its mindset, change its actions, learn from mistakes, adapt, rebuild, take risks, and make different choices as new opportunities appeared.
Some doors opened because of relationships. Some opened because the team kept showing up. Others appeared only after someone decided to build a door where there had not been one before.
That pattern has remained remarkably consistent throughout the history of BTBY: opportunities matter, but what happens next depends on what you choose to do with them.
BTBY has changed. It has grown. It will change again. Because becoming was never supposed to have a finish line.