27 Jul 2026 · 14 min
In this solo episode of The CEO Sage, host Kris Plachy reflects on how the definitions we assign to roles, places, and experiences shape our behavior and life outcomes. She illustrates this idea through personal stories about her marriage, the house they bought three years ago, and the ongoing debate about whether to downsize or move to an active‑55 community. Kris examines how her understanding of "home" has evolved—from a first apartment to a family house to a potential smaller, more flexible residence—highlighting that redefining home can free her to pursue travel and other experiences. She extends the concept to other domains such as motherhood, being a female founder, wealth, and freedom, arguing that conscious, intentional definition is a form of choice that determines results, even when circumstances feel fixed. Throughout, she encourages listeners to examine their own definitions, make purposeful decisions, and reminds them that they always have agency. The episode concludes with a promotional call‑to‑action for the SAGE program, inviting listeners to register for the upcoming season.
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Well, hello and welcome to The CEO Sage. I have something I want to talk to you about. I always have a little thing, right? And that's why I love this podcast, just a little thing to make you go, huh, that's interesting. Okay, so first of all, How you define a thing determines how you interact with a thing. How you define a person determines how you interact with a person, right? How you define an experience determines how you have that experience, right? And, um, so interestingly, this has just been very prescient for me all year. How I define my role as a mom determines kind of how I show up as a mom. And how I define myself as a woman determines how I show up in myself as a woman. How I define myself as a wife determines how I show up as a wife. How I define What I do is how I show up in what I do. All these things are true, right? And we all have different sort of definitions of ourselves as we go through our life. And where I sort of landed on this, and it really— we— I sort of brought it into like a conversation is my husband and I have been talking about moving. And we just bought this house 3 years ago, beautiful house, um, built it, you know, all the innards, right? We got to pick all the, all the pieces. I mean, it's like as customized to us as we could possibly create in a not customized home, right? So love this house. But now that we live here alone most of the time, we're like, this is a house that has a lot of house and a lot of mortgage that I'm not sure we want. And I know what I want is to go— I want to go, I want to go do stuff. I would rather spend all this money that we're paying on a mortgage and go do something all the time, right? But I had to really— like, I've had this conversation a few times, and it started— I had a conversation with my best girlfriend, and she was like, well, why don't you just sell it and put all that money somewhere and go rent for whatever, for a year or so? And I'm like, well, maybe, right? And it sort of gets the wheels going because, you know, what I love about that kind of a conversation is it just makes my brain go, oh, that's a thing. And then, you know, then things unfold, and, and it, it's never by accident. You get things like, like I see things that say like why people who are in their 50s should absolutely sell their house and how it changes your retirement. And then I see other things that are like, oh my God, the last thing you ever want to do is sell your house. What would you do if you sold your house? So it's such an interesting thing to go through. And so I, I was— I, I think even with all of the challenges just in the last few months with my mother being sick kind of watching going through her life and making some of these decisions and where she lives and how she wants to be home. What is home? What does it mean? What does it really mean now? What does home mean now? How do I want to define home now? Because home has meant lots of things in my lifetime. And you know, when I'm— so Mike and I talked about this yesterday. I'm like, what does it mean to you? What does home mean? Because like when we first got together and we first got our first apartment, we weren't even engaged yet. Like home was like practice. It was like play. It was like trying it on. Like, are we going to be a couple? Are we going to like live together? Are we going to build a life together. It was like that, right? And then we got engaged, and then we bought a townhouse, and then it was like, oh, now we're like adults, kind of, and we own a home. But we knew we weren't going to have babies in that house. And then we bought another house, and we knew that was going to be the baby house. Now we had a baby, but then we had a baby and I got all weird, and I was like, I don't know, do I want to work anymore. I sort of had a minute where I didn't think I'd want to work. It was a lie. But we also didn't want to live— home was not where there was traffic like that. We didn't want to live in that. So we moved and we redefined home again. Home was quieter. Home was slower. Home didn't have an upstairs, which was a big deal to me. I always thought you had to go upstairs to go to bed. My whole life. And then we bought this single-story home. So anyway, home has just been redefined for me, not, not on— not by accident, but through my own desire. And so Mike and I are now having this conversation, you know, he's 59, I'm 56, like, what, what does it mean to be home, to have a home? What do we want to make it mean? And I'm like, home to me is somewhere that is lovely, cozy, beautiful, simple, smaller, welcoming. But it isn't somewhere I want to be all the time. It isn't where I'm gonna live every day. I don't want to be home all the time. I am home all the time unless I go travel. I, I don't— I want to be able to go more. This is— this time right now, from like right now till I'm probably 75-ish, maybe later, I hope, um, is— I want home to be a place where I have things and I love it and it's cozy, but I'm not stuck in it. I don't want to be trapped in it. I don't want to have to orbit my entire life around it. That's not— that isn't what I want. Is that what you want? And he said, no, that's not what I want. And I'm like, okay, so then let's redefine home. Because I think a lot of people get to be our age too, and they're like, home should be where all the kids can come, where all the grandkids can come. I think that's fantastic if that's what people want to define as home. I don't want to do that. I want to take my kids to Disneyland. I want to take our grandkids to Disneyland. I want to take our kids on trips. I want to take our grandkids on trips. I don't necessarily need everybody to come stay in my house. That is not— I don't envision that. Maybe I'll change my mind. And so I do find that this is true for everything. How do I want to define money? How do I want to define freedom? How do I want it? How? And what I want— the reason I wanted to sort of record this, because I started talking to people about this in general, and it's so interesting to watch the answers, the responses. What? You just moved there. Oh my God, your house is gorgeous. Why would you want to leave? Moving is so awful. Selling your house, oh my God, so awful. Like, all of it's true and not. So what I want is to choose on purpose. Not because it's hard, not because it's a little scary, because of course. So we went and looked at houses yesterday and we looked at all sorts of them and we looked at one that was in— no offense to anyone listening, please do not be offended. It's just our way of sort of adjusting. We looked at, we looked at an old people community, you know, the active 55 people. And we went and looked at one because it actually had the kind of home that both of us want, which is like a little 2-bedroom duet, crazy town. I can't even believe I'm saying this, with hardly any yard, but super cute, brand new, right? Quiet, cool, really good air conditioning. We live in a hot place. Wind, uh, you know, the sliders that like open the whole way, so it's like a whole other way to go outside. Like, it's like no— it's like a wall of sliders. Super cool. Just enough space, like, and but beautiful. And, and a little space we can make so cozy, so cute. Like, I feel like this— and Mike was losing his mind because it has all the things too that we like. It has pickleball and it has two swimming pools, indoor and outdoor. And I'm like, what if we just did this And then if we hate it, we can leave. And he's like, 100%. And I'm like, and in the meantime, we achieve all these other goals that we have. He's like, yeah, why not? Right? And when we have that attitude, that's what's so wonderful about my marriage with my husband. He's such a like, he's like, yeah, why not? Let's do it. Like, I love that. I don't know what I would do. First of all, you know, as a Sagittarius, you cannot pin me down. I think he figured that out so long ago. That's why He's like, okay, if I tell— if I start to create constraints around her, she freaks out. So let's just make everything a possibility, and then she'll really figure it out, and it won't be like— she won't panic. And but I want to invite all of us to just like, whatever it is, whatever it is that you're currently sitting with, that you're grappling with in, in terms of how to define it— how do I want to define, uh, being a female founder? How do I want to define being a business owner? How do I want to define my relationship with my mother? How do I want to define my relationship with myself? How do I want to define my relationship with my wealth? It doesn't— you can insert here. Yeah, how you choose that is what will drive the result you get. So this podcast is to remind you that you're choosing, even if you haven't been choosing on purpose, even if you aren't like consciously saying, oh, this is how I want to define my life, myself, as a mother of teenagers. This is how I want to define myself as a newly divorced woman. This is how I want to define myself as a woman who is pursuing the sale of her business. It doesn't matter what you're going through, where you are in your life, You get to decide how you want to define yourself in this moment, and how you choose to do that with conscious awareness will determine your result, period. Because you're getting results anyway, which means you've already chosen something. Even if you didn't say, I choose this, you're already choosing. You're choosing it every day. You're choosing to stay, you're choosing to be in this marriage, you're choosing to keep this business, you're choosing to not speak to your best friend. I don't know, whatever it is, you're— that is a choice. Even if your story is like, oh, I don't have a choice. Yes, you do. You still are choosing to define yourself as that person. You could choose to define yourself differently. I choose now to be a woman who doesn't accept that kind of behavior from my spouse. I choose now to be a woman who is a business owner who thinks this way about her business. I choose now to be a woman who has— who interacts this way in the relationship she has with her family, with her money. You get to choose. It's so much more empowering to remember that you always do have that ability. Even though circumstances happen that you can't control, you still get to define who you will be in it. So I'll keep you posted if I'm gonna go live in an old people village. I find myself so entertaining. But you know what? What else are we gonna do? Let's go try things. It's fun. Talk to you next time. The best news ever! SAGE has reopened for registration going into the 26-27 season. We will begin at the end of September and complete next year in July, and I'm so excited. We have some amazing gatherings scheduled and the focus for this year will be just wonderful. I cannot wait to get started. There's still some spots available. So if you're interested, please go to thevisionary.ceo/sageinvitation. You'll see all the details. And the next step is for us to meet and have a call and talk about it. Let's do it. Let's go.
