(00:00) What actually is the life cycle of a female CEO? What I found is that there is such exquisite overlap with the stages of maturation for women and men in dynamic in a woman’s relationship to her business. You’ve been burned by vendors who didn’t deliver on their promises. You’ve sold less than you put on your manifestation board.
(00:29) It feels like you’re still working, overseeing, and managing. When a business is a codependent energy, when it is a toxic dynamic, your life force will be drained, and only a shell of you will be available and present to your outer lifescape. If you have your business by the balls while proclaiming your love for it, it’s time to let go.
(00:59) So, I’m calling all of my overachieving, underreceiving ladies who’ve been giving it their all, girl bossing, wifeing, mothering, and somehow instead of feeling happy, content, fulfilled, and grateful, feel bitter, overwhelmed, numb, and resentful. So, I’d love to give you some of my hot takes and quick tips to end this overwhelm, to shift your nervous system into a state of receiving so that you can have and hold more and so that you can handle what comes at you with more grace and ease and relaxation because a relaxed woman is a powerful woman.
(01:32) So, I’d love to invite you to exhale, my free master class where I will share reframes to disrupt your burnout patterns. I’ll be offering my signature solution as well as a free gift. So, register at kellybroganmd.com/exhale or at the link in show notes. I’ll see you there, beauty. Hi, and welcome back to Reclamation Radio. I am Dr.
(01:54) Kelly Brogan and today I want to share a bit about my journey as a female entrepreneur. So, if you have been following Reclamation Radio and my reclaimed woman hot takes, you know that I have been calling out the poor bargain of careerism for women. That is identifying as a career woman as opposed to a woman with a career especially in the context of marriage and motherhood.
(02:29) I have come to even question whether women are biologically well suited to be leaders. And that’s not to suggest before you get your feminist panties in a bunch that we cannot lead well. In fact, I consider that one of my primary characteristics is leadership capacity. It’s to suggest that over time this yang penetrative predatorial output takes a devastating toll not only on our actual relational world but also biologically and it is really euphemistically referred to as burnout. So my interest in understanding why so
(03:19) many of my very successful female colleagues were totally fried led me to study and to call in some highlevel mentorship in the business realm. Led me to study the dynamics of female leadership in the business world. So what actually is the life cycle of a female CEO? And what I found is that there is such exquisite overlap with the stages especially as David Data refers to them of maturation for women and men in dynamic in a woman’s relationship to her business as a founder. So I want to share some of my perspectives today and
(04:10) of course some of the solutions that I have ready to to offer. But really I want to give you the lay of the land because this is what helped me to orient and to begin the process of exhaling. And spoiler alert, today my experience of my business is what I always dreamt was possible.
(04:43) Now, would I have loved to explore what it would be like to have a business over all of these years where I get to express my passion and creativity and serve and be in my ikigai moment of that overlap between prosperity and potential to earn my talents and gifts, my service, and what it is that I enjoy doing every day? Would that have been lovely if I didn’t also need to pay the bills with the revenue garnered from this enterprise? Yes.
(05:13) Do I celebrate men who provide for their women? Absolutely. However, if you are a female business owner and you relate to what I’m about to share, then take it from me that you’re on a journey and there is an arc. And you’ll know when you have initiated beyond the second stage, right? Beyond this realm of neutralized polarity, right? Because even David data talks about the second stage as being when women have sufficiently masculineized, right? So they’ve become independent and self-sufficient. They’ve cultivated the opposite of their essence. When men have
(05:57) sufficiently feminized, so they’ve gotten in touch with their feelings and it’s a pretty stable but dead zone relative to the third stage complimentarity and polarity that is available when there’s an organization of energies into the feminine essence and the masculine. So I will ask you if any of these diagnostics so to speak are familiar to you if you’re in a second stage business.
(06:34) If you’re running this kind of an operation as a business owner I like to think of this stage as your business being a good wife. Okay? So stick with me here. Maybe you’re taking home less than 30% of revenue, which means that you’re actually earning well, maybe even easily, but somehow it gets frittered away from this contractor and this vendor and this tech expense, and so you end up somehow taking home less than half.
(07:06) Do you feel like you are on and available all of the time even though you’re paying a team? Do you feel like you keep a mental or literal checklist of who needs to do what and following up if they are actually doing it? Do you feel like you’re sometimes ready to throw a match on the whole business because it feels like this hamster wheel? Do you feel like no one has ever really taught you how to run a business? Like nobody’s ever taught you how to compensate your employees, like what even the structural options are for that and how to properly
(07:48) build a team? Do you feel like your systems and processes are clunky and they don’t seem to actually take operational burden off of your plate? Like they’re kind of just another thing on the to-do list to maintain? Do you feel like you’re scrambling with launches, the notorious launch model and last-minute financial stop gaps? Do you feel like there’s always something? This was the worst for me personally. There’s always something new to implement for marketing.
(08:22) Like anytime you make contact with any expert or consultant, like they have all this this new approach, this new perspective, and then you have this to bring back to your team and somehow implement and it feels totally overwhelming. And do you feel like your inspiration and your vision outpace your team’s ability to execute? The third stage promise, if we want to call it that, is when your business becomes a good husband.
(09:00) Instead of a well-intentioned, supportive wife, it becomes a good husband who reliably provides, who disburdens you of concerning yourself with problem solving and who has a long game plan for exactly how you’re going to be not only okay, but thriving. and happy and in pleasure. Right? So in this model to get down to brass tacks you are taking home more than 50% of your revenue.
(09:42) You travel, you take evenings, weekends and swaths of time off and the business not only continues to earn but it grows. This is a big one. It grows in your absence. You can’t imagine telling your leadership team what to do. Did you hear me? This is the biggest one for me. You cannot imagine telling your leadership team what to do. So, you don’t keep those lists anymore because they know better than you what is in the best interest of the business.
(10:14) Your systems and communications are clear and dialed in. Your issues are resolved rapidly and reliably. You’re not spending endless hours a day on voice note and texting and Slack messages and inefficiencies. You’re clear on what you’re offering and why. And you’ve relaxed the chasing and seeking energy that I was just referred to.
(10:38) And everyone on your team is in their zone of genius. So you have the right people in the right seats. You also feel provided for and supported and like you can exhale finally. So your system tells you okay this is fun now. So you may be if this is relatable someone who has turned your pain into purpose.
(11:10) Maybe you have crystallized the belief that you have something actually important and meaningful to share. Perhaps you’ve even received consistent feedback in the form of financial validation from your clients. Maybe you have reached several goals. You have testimonials. You have six figure years that have turned into six figure months. And you have a powerful network of colleagues and associates and allies.
(11:35) But it still feels like you’re chasing something, like there’s an oasis on the horizon. Maybe it seems like that something is leads, is conversions, is revenue, specific revenue goals. My sense, and what I’m here to say is that it’s actually a feeling. It’s an exhale.
(12:01) It’s the reclamation of what started you on this journey, which is your role as visionary. but you’re in the weeds and you can’t seem to like peer above them to get out of the daily grind because you still are in charge of what is being handled. You’re still putting out fires. You’re making decisions. You’re investing in growth.
(12:24) You’re launching, launching, launching. And you’ve accumulated what I like to call tales from the trenches. You’ve been burned by vendors who didn’t deliver on their promises. You’ve sold less than you put on your manifestation board. And somehow, even while paying the salaries of potentially multiple team members, it feels like you’re still working, overseeing, and managing as much as if they weren’t there.
(12:52) You feel available all the time. This is an energetic marriage that is imbalanced, and that’s why it’s draining. It’s the codependent model. This fatigue is what we call bone-weary burnout and I do believe that it is phenomenologically far more likely to occur in the female body. I have been there for sure and I get it.
(13:24) So despite years of this roller coaster, you know that starts with this is it. This is the solution. This is the exit from the hamster wheel grind to disappointment. rinse and repeat and endless endless consultants who for sure promised me that they had the answer to why my business didn’t feel like an exhale. I don’t even want to tally the investment that I made cumulatively in consultants over the years.
(13:54) So despite all of this, I was actually at a recent point in my business a couple of years ago only scheduled to work two to three hours a week. I had for several years a consistent seven figure revenue doing exactly what I love and am passionate and feel like I came here to do, which is to spread the good word of sovereign living.
(14:20) However, my heart still yearned for an experience of my business, for a feeling that I knew was possible, even though on paper I had arrived and in many ways beyond what most of my colleagues were experiencing in terms of the actual hours that I was putting into the business per week relative to the the revenue.
(14:45) I still had an experience of being available and on and I was still longing for that polarity in the relationship that I had to my business. So for my business to consistently and reliably bring my visions as they would arise to life and to operationally translate my passions into profit.
(15:14) So I would have an idea, right? this was what I longed for and I would want to share that idea, that inspiration, that vision particularly while it was still alive and I would want a team that would lovingly turn that into a powerful and profit generating resource for all right because I’m a big believer in the what is good for me is good for you, what is good for you is good for me model.
(15:38) So I spent the past about three years exploring my inner landscape and the many blocks and kinks that I had around this yearning. So sea moss has become quite a thing lately and I love myself a therapeutic food over a supplement any day. But there’s sea moss and then there’s my fave samati sea mosss.
(16:00) So most people don’t realize that mineral deficiency is one of the biggest drivers of imbalance. whether you’re experiencing that as fatigue or weight gain or cravings. So unless you’re growing your own food, it doesn’t contain almost by definition the spectrum of minerals that our ancestors enjoyed. So that’s why I am excited about Samadhi Sea Moss.
(16:21) It’s not your typical store-bought rope farmed sea mosss. It’s 100% wild and it’s harvested by Caribbean divers from super clean waters, ensuring purity and also ecological respect. It contains over 90 bioavailable minerals and vitamins, many of which are hard to get even in a very high quality diet.
(16:49) Plus, it’s a natural collagen booster and prebiotic, making it an effortless way to support the gut, your skin, and your overall vitality. So, I take one to two tablespoons a day in warm water that I also put a little bit of sea salt in and lime or lemon. Key lime is actually my favorite. and I noticed a shift in my digestion after just a week.
(17:06) The best part is that it tastes like nothing, which makes it super easy to add to your routine. So, if you want to experience the benefits yourself, Samati is offering 10% off with the code Kelly 10. Check out the link in show notes and enjoy. I found out the ways that I was micromanaging even though I thought I was like the chillest boss ever.
(17:34) I found out that I was failing to fully trust my employees, let alone God, even when I personally made a confident hire. I found out that I was addicted to my own involvement in the business, even as I wanted spaciousness and support. And I found out that I was emotionally dependent on employees who were holding the business and its growth and evolution and development back.
(17:59) I began to learn about this natural cycle of a CEO from one who hires vendors, right? So you are starting out and you hire vendors and you’re telling them what to do. So obviously you are in a position of dominance. You are directing them. They are executing. Then at a certain point you’ll move into the stage where you’re hiring managers.
(18:25) This is when your business is a good wife. You’re hiring managers and they definitely have expertise but they are not leaders and so you’re still in the position of directing them and overseeing their work. And then comes the experience of hiring leaders and your first one is the game change because a leader is somebody who can be trusted to lead which means that you don’t tell that person what to do that they basically onboard themselves and that they grow and expand the business within 3 months. These are some of the indicators. But what I discovered is
(19:15) that there is an inner job, right? There is a preparation and a maturation that is required to ready yourself as a woman to trust, respect and receive in a way that allows leaders into your space and fosters your right response. So it is the readying for the feminine pole that you will occupy as this creative visionary and inspirational and source of inspiration for the spirit of the business.
(19:59) There are so many familiar dynamics that lead us to get in our own way. So, if you have your business by the balls while proclaiming your love for it, it’s time to let go. Building a business that performs like a good husband allows you to live in the wife archetype in the rest of your life, including in your marriage if you happen to be in one. But when a business is a codependent energy, when it is a toxic dynamic, your life force will be drained and only a shell of you will be available and present to your outer lifescape. So once I began hiring leaders, my system
(20:46) responded because I was at that point in my case after 15 years, you know, and 10 years in the digital space, I was ready to be led and truly supported in so many ways. It required that I relinquish attachment to my identity as a career woman. that was somehow a preerequisite.
(21:14) Of course, I had to extinguish and evolve a lot of my activist impulses which I’ve, you know, shared my progression through the loosening of attachment to my role as an activist. In fact, I have a whole master class on the subject called Awakened Activism where I call out the many ways that my wounds were just festering.
(21:38) And then I had to get to the place where I understood that my identification as a career woman was at odds with my deeper fulfillment. So if these were somehow emotional prerequisites that readied me to trust, respect, receive, and also identify, right? Because it’s not just attracting leaders to your space. It’s also knowing how to identify when somebody fits that bill.
(22:03) So, it’s a courtship just like in the romantic world. So, all of this looks like a very familiar maturational trajectory. So, here’s how you’ll know when your business is on track. You’ll have one leader on your team who you cannot imagine telling what to do. They’re not going to be learning on the job.
(22:28) They’re not going to be coming to you about decisions. They are in a position to steer the business usually because they already have experience having done so and they recognize a specific opportunity with you personally to express their gifts. I tend to find that operational leaders are best as women and that marketing and sales leaders are best as men.
(23:03) A perspective that I have cultivated is that women are not naturally hierarchical. So it’s actually quite challenging for us to organize ourselves. And that’s why in my dynamic with my operational lead, my online business manager Stephanie, we have more of partner energy, right? It’s it’s truly not the case that in our dynamic I am on some sort of a pedestal.
(23:31) She brings that much to bear. Whereas in the marketing and sales world which are essentially hunting, chasing and capturing, this is the domain best suited for a man’s biology in my opinion. And so all of the complexity that has over the history of my business come from trying to organize a bunch of women because I formerly only hired women into some sort of hierarchical dynamic that really wasn’t natural because we are generally collaborative relative to men who can be in a room together for 5 minutes and know how to organize themselves in terms of competencies without even saying a
(24:07) word. It was very clunky and it was inefficient and it often led to what I observe in many female-run businesses which is that you have an alpha female at the top who is hoping to hire even more alpha women to allow her to exhale but she keeps hiring women who are not quite as alpha as her and being in the kink of disappointment. Okay.
(24:33) So there are ways dynamically to to exit that by acknowledging the differences biologically that we have in relationship to tasks and responsibilities and execution as women because I know so many women who are telling themselves that they’re working soft and that they’re in their feminine and I see and feel them obsessing about their work like they are anxiously attached in a dysfunctional relationship.
(25:04) ship and they get drained in the very same way. So the key is hiring trustworthy leadership and it’s something that you can only really ready for when you know to want it. So that’s this landscape that I’m trying to depict and you know how to ready for it. So, even though this feels a bit like pimping out my hot, wealthy, amazing, well-endowed husband, I want to share some of the things that Stephanie, my online business manager, has brought to my life.
(25:41) So, she has helped me to understand why AI and I come from the conspiracy theorist realm of questioning and expressing concern about AI. and she has come with the perspective, experience, and the wherewithal to show me why female entrepreneurs specifically who work with AI are in a position to minimize their overhead costs, right? So you don’t end up hiring a family that you’re paying $50,000 a month and to maximize their time away from the computer with automations and systems and these agents that perform a lot of the mundane functions. At least that’s how we have
(26:28) it set up. So she also helped me to understand how to resolve shiny object syndrome. Right? So, which I’m a devil Gemini, so I’m very susceptible to lots of stimulus attracting my eye and definitely ran my business that way over the years.
(26:50) So, this idea of working with rocks that you stick to every 90 days, you re-evaluate them and you assure follow- through execution and the linear steps towards a goal. Sounds very beautifully masculine, right? also why simple sells and how to streamline my systems and automation so that everybody knows exactly what’s happening. Everybody knows exactly what they’re getting.
(27:16) This is definitely if you follow my journey not something that came naturally to me. So this coupled with the inner work that I have done maturationally that of course stems from my orientation towards womanhood as being one of radical responsibility from my felt experience and recognizing opportunities to surrender. So this inner work is what has prepared me to let go of the neurotic, codependent, micromanagy, covert stuff I was up to even as I was this like very chill expressed CEO and boss.
(28:05) And I am so passionate about where I have arrived because I wake up every single day finally feeling that exhale. And I don’t worry. I am not vigilant. And whatever comes through this beautiful vessel of a business feels like exactly what is meant to come through. That sounds to me like it has become a spiritual technology for me finally and one that marries the secular and the sacred.
(28:37) And we have by uh popular request uh decided to offer support to very select uh businesses who are on this similar path so that we can do a psychospiritual and operational audit and get you to this third stage and out of the trenches of a depolarized dynamic with your business. Because there are just too many of us as female entrepreneurs who are like becoming these shells of women and then telling ourselves, gaslighting ourselves that we love our jobs and it’s so fulfilling and we’re so grateful that we have the opportunity to work and be moms and take care of the house and our pets and maybe also our men. So there is a
(29:18) way there is a way to turn your business into a good husband and it really is the same path that delivers you to a beautiful marriage. It’s the same dynamic. So if it appeals to you to collaborate with us, I would love to witness this kind of blossoming. It’s as delightful for me as getting the feedback that I do these days that I have played a role in saving somebody’s marriage. So, you’ll find the details in the show notes below and stay tuned.
(29:49) I will continue to update you on my entrepreneurial journey and the many surprising ways that it is a mirror for my inner marriage and these relational dynamics that I am in a position to observe and lovingly mature. And I also want to take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude for every single vendor employee and collaborator that has touched my journey as a career woman into my experience of being a woman with a career. I also want to thank every single client and patient and customer who has somehow vibed with what it is
(30:36) that I have had to share and who has co-created with me through these offerings. It is truly one of the more robustly transformational paths to go from this level of selfexpression. And it has truly been a magic carpet ride and I wouldn’t change any aspect of it. So, thank you.
