About Sally & Zach

We started at eighteen. We kept choosing each other.

Max-Well Coaching is shaped by lived partnership, rigorous personal development, and the belief that relationship work is practical, emotional, spiritual, and deeply human.

Sally and Zach Maxwell

Sally & Zach

The methodology is lived before it is taught.

Their work comes from a long marriage, decades of coaching, and a willingness to look directly at the patterns most couples learn to talk around.

Sally and Zach Maxwell standing together

Sally & Zach

We teach this work from inside a real marriage.

We've been together for over twenty years. We have two kids. And we coach couples through the hardest and most rewarding parts of their intimate relationships.

Between us, we have over three decades of coaching experience. We've worked with hundreds of couples - from California to New York to Europe and the Middle East. We've written 80+ articles for the Aspen Daily News in our weekly column, "Modern Love." And we've spent the better part of our careers studying what actually makes relationships work - not the idealized version, but the real, messy, complicated, beautiful version.

We didn't start here because we had it all figured out. We started here because we didn't.

Like most couples, we came into our relationship carrying subconscious beliefs about love that we'd never examined. We inherited cultural narratives about what marriage was supposed to look like that didn't match our reality. We had the same recurring fights. We watched desire fluctuate. We struggled with transparency. We learned - sometimes the hard way - that love is not something you find and keep. It's something you build and rebuild, consciously, over and over again.

The methodology we teach isn't something we invented in a classroom. It's something we've lived. We developed it through our own marriage, refined it through decades of coaching other couples, and pressure-tested it against every kind of relationship challenge you can imagine.

We practice every single tool we teach. The Narrative Audit. The Evidence Journal. The Think It Three Times Rule. The Unsaid List. The Four Buckets. The Resolution Conversation. The Conscious Sexual Agreement. These aren't concepts to us. They're how we live.

Zach Maxwell

Zach Maxwell

Root-level coaching for the belief systems behind the pattern.

Zach Maxwell is a relationship coach, writer, and co-founder of The Art of Conscious Love - a methodology he built alongside his wife Sally through 22 years of conscious, intentional partnership.

With over 16 years of coaching experience, Zach has worked with couples, executives, industry-leading entrepreneurs, major recording artists, and students from around the world. What connects every client he's ever worked with is the same thing: a gap between how they're living and how they know they could be living - and a subconscious belief system quietly running the show from behind the scenes.

Zach's work goes directly to the root. Drawing on his deep study of the subconscious mind, he helps clients identify the hidden beliefs and habitual patterns that drive their behavior in relationships - and rewire them. The result isn't incremental improvement. It's a fundamental shift in how people show up for the people they love most.

A lifelong New Yorker turned Aspen local, Zach now lives in the mountains with Sally and their two children. When he's not coaching or writing, you'll find him on the mountain, playing music, or deepening the spiritual practice that informs everything he teaches.

Sally Maxwell

Sally Maxwell

Relational wisdom with the discipline of a high performer.

Sally Maxwell is a relationship coach, thought leader, and co-founder of The Art of Conscious Love - a methodology she built alongside her husband Zach through 22 years of conscious, intentional partnership.

With over 14 years of experience in coaching and leadership, Sally brings a rare combination of rigorous personal development work and hard-won relational wisdom to everything she teaches. A former internationally competitive ski racer ranked 4th in the world, she knows what it takes to perform at the highest level - and she knows that no amount of external achievement substitutes for a life that feels deeply connected and alive on the inside.

Sally's work is grounded in a simple but powerful belief: that the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives. Through The Art of Conscious Love, she helps couples move from patterns of disconnection and reactivity into partnerships that are intentional, resilient, and deeply fulfilling.

Originally from Maine and New York City, Sally now lives in Aspen, Colorado with her husband and two children. When she's not coaching, you'll find her on the mountain, in the kitchen trying something new, or fully present with the family that inspires everything she does.

Our story

The personal history is part of the professional lens.

The work is not presented from a distance. Sally and Zach teach from inside the realities of a long relationship.

22 years of partnership, two children, hundreds of clients, and a weekly Modern Love column sharpen the way they listen for what is actually happening underneath the surface story.

Sally and Zach walking with their children

Why we do this work

The relationship changes when the people inside it can see more clearly.

We want to teach people the tools to create a relationship that grows better and better over time.

With nearly a combined 30 years of experience coaching individuals and couples, Sally and Zach synthesize what they have learned into a customized experience based on each client's needs.

The goal is not a perfect-looking relationship. The goal is a living relationship with more truth, intimacy, repair, and choice.

What we believe

Spiritual enough to question the story. Practical enough to make a spreadsheet.

Max-Well can hold taboo topics, direct language, and grounded tools in the same conversation.

Your relationship is the greatest creative project of your life. Treat it as such.

The challenges are not proof that you chose wrong. They may be the curriculum.

The whole truth matters, especially when it can be spoken without contempt.

We say things many coaches will avoid, and we do it with love.

Client testimonial

The honest version belongs here.

My husband and I used Zach Maxwell as a coach a few years ago, at a time that my marriage had reached a rock bottom. I entered coaching feeling anxious, angry, confused, hopeless... The experience taught me more about myself in a few months than years of therapy could. I was not an easy client. In fact, I was a giant pain in the ass, so I felt it important to give this feedback letting Zach know that much of what I learned with him I use today, - that it was impactful and eye opening. It was needed for my personal and relational evolution - he was a part of that. I rave about him to other people looking for a couples coach. I believe he helped us look at ourselves more honestly and address issues that needed to be tended to in order for us to have thriving relationships not just with each other, but with ourselves and the world. The straightforward approach, the accountability factor in the method was very effective for both of us.
Anonymous Client

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