Start Here: What This Newsletter Actually Does
If you work in wellness and want companies to take you seriously, this is the only briefing you need
Hola amigo,
I am going to be direct with you.
The wellness economy is worth $6.8 trillion. It is growing faster than global GDP.
Companies are spending MORE on employee health than at any point in modern history.
And most wellness professionals are still struggling to get a meeting.
Not because their work is poor. Not because companies do not care.
But because the way most wellness professionals present their work makes it almost impossible for a buyer to say yes.
I know this because I sit on the other side of the table.
Who I am
My name is Diego Carrete.
I am the Chief Wellness Officer at First Abu Dhabi Bank—the largest bank in the UAE and the first bank in the Middle East to create this role.
I design wellness strategy for thousands of employees.
I sit in the meetings where wellness budgets get approved or rejected.
I see the proposals that land and the ones that disappear.
Before this, I spent 23 years in the wellness industry.
I started at $20 an hour. I have been a personal trainer, a coach, a consultant, and now a corporate executive.
I have seen this industry from every angle.
And I can tell you with certainty: the gap between talented wellness professionals and corporate opportunities is not expertise.
It is translation.
What this newsletter does
Wellness Intelligence is a weekly briefing that shows you:
What companies are actually paying for right now—not what the industry press says, but what gets approved internally
How corporate buyers think — what language they respond to, what makes them nervous, what they need to justify the spend upstream
How to position your work so it is easier to say yes to—clearer packaging, stronger commercial framing, and a better fit with what the buyer already values
This content is not wellness advice.
This is not motivation.
This is not another newsletter telling you to “follow your passion.”
This is market intelligence from inside the buyer’s chair.
Who this is for
You are probably one of these people:
You are a wellness professional stuck in one-to-one work. You are excellent at what you do. You have qualifications. But your income resets every month, and you know there is a bigger market out there—you just do not know how to enter it.
You work inside a company and want to build a wellness function. You need data, frameworks, and language that makes sense to a board. You need to justify your existence in business terms, not wellness terms.
You are pivoting from corporate into wellness consulting. You understand business, but you are new to the wellness side. You need to know where the money is moving and how to position yourself credibly.
If any of these sound familiar, you are in the right place.
What to read first
Here are three posts that capture what this newsletter does best:
Companies Don’t Want Wellness Experts Anymore — Why the market shifted and what buyers actually want now
Workplace Wellness Is Shrinking. And That’s Good News—How to position yourself for the new corporate budget
$9.8 Trillion Wellness Market. Mostly Untapped — Where the real opportunities are right now
The free edition gives you a sharp market reframe every week.
Something you can use immediately to think differently about your positioning.
The paid edition gives you the implementation layer: frameworks, buyer translations, positioning tools, and the commercial clarity that turns “I do wellness” into something a company can defend, approve, and fund.
It costs less than 1 AED a day.
If your work is excellent but companies are not buying it, the problem is rarely your skill. It is usually your frame.
This newsletter fixes the frame.
Diego Carrete
Chief Wellness Officer, First Abu Dhabi Bank
Founder, Wellness Intelligence
Author, The Evergreen Company