25 Aug 2025 · 23 min
A founder explores seven transitions women leaders face beyond becoming CEO: dismantling false beliefs, reclaiming clarity, intentional design, and developing a sage mindset. The talk covers how to move from building a business to building yourself, and why continuous learning matters at every stage.
Foreign and welcome. You know what today is? Today is the last of the transitions for the beyond the CEO content that we've been going through. And I'm really pleased to hear from all of you. So when you send in your emails and say, oh my gosh, this is what I needed today, etc. Thank you for that. As a reminder, please write a review. It'll take you just as long to send that email and it really does help our reach. Asking as one female founder to another, it's honestly the best thing you can do to help other creators out, other business owners out. If you know people who have podcasts and you like their podcast and you listen regularly, just two seconds, write the review. It makes all the difference. So putting that on the front end instead of the back end. So today we're going to be talking about the seventh transition, which is the sage knows there's always more to know. And I want to read you one of the passages that goes with this section to sort of kick us off. As you know, I am publishing a book, although it might end up being a workbook, and I'll share more about that later. The sage knows there's always more to know. The sage doesn't hoard her wisdom, she shares it. She uplifts models, invites. She walks with pride, humility. She no longer chases the summit. She becomes the mountain. This is where she lands, not with a thud, but with a breath. She no longer grasps. She's no longer running. She's no longer proving. She's simply living. And she is deeply awake to the truth. Wisdom isn't what you collect, it's how you carry what you've learned. The sage is always a seeker. She doesn't assume she's arrived. She doesn't confuse confidence with knowing everything. Instead, she remains curious. She explores her mind. She explores her reactions, her relationships. She moves to the world with empathy, presence and discernment. Not because she needs to be better, but but because she loves becoming. She seeks not out of lack, but out of reverence for how much life still has to show her. She's not afraid to change her mind, to let go of what once worked, to shift, to soften, to reimagine. So that is sort of my kickoff here. You know, we've gone through all of these transitions, right? The first one is business readiness for you and for them. And we talked about how to step into the advisory consultancy role. Those two parts of this process are pretty tactical and strategic. There is. There is some work to do there outside of yourself. Right. We've got to really look at the business. We've got to look at our process, the Business Readiness Assessment that I provided. If you haven't taken it yet, go to the visionary CEO, BusinessReady. You can take the Business Readiness Assessment. You can get a summary if you want. You can send that summary directly to us at the helloithevisionary CEO and I'll take a look at it. I've now had a lot of people take it. It's pretty accurate. And it breaks down for you what areas of the business, the team, the business, the. You need to really be invested in now in order for you to be able to step away and for the business to be able to function without you in a way that it can't probably today. The second phase is the becoming the advisor and consultant. And I'm working with a lot of my clients in this space right now. And I think you've probably heard me say this, but I really do work with my clients in two. Two major inflection points. And the first one has been addressed for the majority of the beginning of my whole career and up till recently, which is how to lead, how to truly step into that leadership position. That was delivered to you through the how to CEO program. It was delivered to you through lead. It's now being delivered to you through the One Hour Leader, which is a digital program. You have to learn how to lead. You have to learn how to have difficult conversations. You have to learn how to hold people accountable. You have to learn how to sit through the muck of what other people do and find your own voice. You have to learn how to figure out what your staffing plan should look like. You have to understand what it means to scale through people, not just through ideas. And then we can step into the advisor in the consultancy role. We can't do that until we understand the mechanics and the scaffolding that we've had to have in place to lead a team to success and achieve results without us doing everything. Becoming the advisor and the consultant requires a whole new sort of approach and philosophy as it relates to the questions that you ask, the projects you get involved in or not, how you hold people accountable, what you hold them accountable to. And it's hard to get there if you haven't done the first part. So those first two sections of beyond the CEO are very. Are very focused on your intellectual mind and building elements within your business that create processes and practices for other people to follow. Yeah. But then we get into the rest, which is really now Your journey, dismantling false truth. Like what are those things that you have come to believe about yourself for so, for so long that you just think it's the truth? Those thoughts, those beliefs, those habits of belief, they limit what comes for you beyond this moment, what you allow beyond this moment. And then we have to talk about transition four, which is reclaiming future clarity. We spend so much time with our head down, we don't look up. And then when we do look up and we're running a multi million dollar business and we've got all these people and we've made good money and we've lived a beautiful life and then we ask God, what am I doing? Where? What? I don't want this. I don't want to do this anymore. And that's okay. It doesn't mean you have to quit today. But you could. What do you want? Do you know? And if you do know, then we have to make sure those steps in one and two are handled because that buys you the freedom you're looking for, right? And then we go into five, which is play. How do we play? How do we allow ourselves to try things we've never done before? How do we expose ourselves to people we've never met before? What does that do when we do that? You know, what it does is it shows us there are so many worlds out here that we haven't been a part of because we've been building a beautiful one. But there's so much. And I know you have pet interests, little joys, things you love. And I want you to follow those, explore them. Not with the intention of like turning them into a business. You don't have to make everything have a job. You can just allow yourself joy and see what the joy teaches you. Then we get into intentional design. Now, I figured some things out. I know what I want to do, I know what I want to test, I know what I want to try. And it may not ever be another business. Who knows? Who knows? And that brings us to today. The sage always knows. Sage does always know. I have a personal joy that I express through my business and that is working with women who love to talk about ideas. Big ideas, transformative ideas, things that other people don't talk about. I love to work with women who really avoid day to day mundane conversations. In fact, that's why so many of the women I tend to meet say the same as I, which is I have a lot of girlfriends. It's not because we don't like girls and it's actually not true. We tend to have a lot of girlfriends. It's just that we don't have a lot of girlfriends where we live. We have a lot of girlfriends all over because we collect them when we find them. But what I learned from Martha Brooks is that if you really want to foster friendship, you do have to have proximity. But so many of us live in communities where there aren't a lot of other women like us. And so it's hard. So being with women who love to have big ideas, love to talk about big ideas, love to talk about possibilities. The Sage is a woman who other people recognize, who has built a reputation as a person with a body of knowledge and work and wisdom that is unparalleled. She is the woman other women seek. And I know there's a lot of you listening to this. That's where you are. You are the head of this or the overseer of that, or everybody in your industry calls you or they. You be at your. I know that's who you are. You are a sage. You know what a sage know there's always more to know. The people that I meet who are resting on their laurels, who don't challenge themselves to learn new things, who want things to just be simple, easy. They don't explore ideas, whether that's through books or conferences or speakers or podcasts or classes. That's not sage energy. Sage energy says and whispers all the time. There's more. And I'll be honest, I think one of the challenges of that is never feeling quite sated. But I don't think we were put here for that. I think we were put here to explore, pursue, learn, realize, manifest, do create, and then share. Give it back. Create space for other people where there never was a space. I know that many of you listening to this are women who own businesses who have create or are in senior leadership roles where a woman never sat before, or very few. You have fostered space that didn't exist. That's what most of us have done. Especially, as you know, I've spent a lot of time talking about Generation X women like we. We've created this whole bubble of space that now so many people are, Are. Are benefiting from, which I think is fantastic. But we're not done. At least I'm not. And other women who identify that way, I know they think the same way. There's more. I think I've said this before. I had a client asked me a long time ago. She's been in Sage, I think, four years now. She asked me, or maybe it's three. She asked me, when am I, like, done? When do I graduate from Sage? And I'm like, when I'm done, I guess. Because as long as I'm doing this work, I will continue to push all of us through another layer of transformative thinking. That, to me, is my role. And I know there's a lot of people have no interest in that. They really don't. And that is, oh, okay. They just want the answers. And then they want to go on their vacation to Jamaica or wherever and have a great time. Great, go get that. I want to go to Jamaica and I want to ask more questions. Not everybody wants that. So the sage, right? When you get to the space where you have been willing to confront false truths that are keeping you stuck and to explore what a potential new vision for your life in your world could, and then you let yourself go and you play in all sorts of environments with people and experiences and things that you never had thought you would do before. And then you, with intention, you say, oh, this is so cool. This is now what I want to bring into my life on purpose. You've. You've proven you are standing in your sage era, which means there's always more. And if you don't start another business, okay, a lot of women do, but a lot of women don't. You still will go back up. False truths. Reclaiming future clarity. Play intentional design. That loop will perpetuate as soon as you've moved through whatever it is you've identified to a level of understanding and mastery. That feels really good. You'll get itchy again, mama. But see, I think this is part of what keeps us alive. Me personally, I get, you know, I play pickleball with a lot of people, and a lot of the people I play pickleball with are retired. I'm 55. Most of the people I play with are probably 60 and up. And I have had plenty of conversations with people who are, quote, unquote, retired, full of life, bored as heck. Bored, bored. I have a lot of hypothesis for why this happens. This. My. My primary one that I'm focused on right now is majority of these people that I know had, like, job jobs they worked with for in companies or they had, like a job title that they had in different companies. They didn't do personal transformative work in their lifetime. They lived their life, and it's a beautiful life. And I don't be. I'm not judging it, but they didn't do the transformative part on purpose. So they don't have the tools. They're not sure. They don't know. What do you do when you're bored? I'm finished by 11 o' clock in the morning, one woman said. I do all my, I play pickleball, I go to the gym, I do this, I take my shower and I'm finished by 11 o' clock in the morning. I have nothing else to do. She is this vibrant woman who used to be in a very high ranking political position. I'm like, mama, there is so much more. First, you're a sage woman. Like you have so much to give back. Can we, can we please, can you tell me what you know? You're so accomplished. Feed the future with your wisdom. Please feed the rest of us with what you know. Women need to do this for one another. Oh, goodness gracious, people. I get very excited. So where are you? Where are you in this? The seven transitions? Because I don't know that they all flow in order. I do think in that perfect world they do. But I think we bounce around a little because sometimes we're trying to become the advisory consultant role in our business and we have all these false truths even about that, all these things we believe about ourselves that are keeping us from doing even just that. Because one of the, you know, I've had several conversations with women about this recently and one of the, one of the common questions I recommend that always seems to stun people is somehow quite novel. And I don't know if you'll think this when you hear it, but a lot of my clients will say there's just, people just keep coming to me and asking me questions, same ask. They ask me the same questions over and over again. Right? Or I'm trying to get this person prepared to be the person who will take this over. Right. And we think our job is to like talk it into them, tell it into them, talk this, just talk to them, tell them, teach them all the time. No, if you're trying to either get someone to stop asking you questions that they always ask you, or you're trying to help people help someone develop into more of a strategic leadership role instead of a tactical hands on role, then you need to get out of the way with one question. And it's so simple. What do you think the answer is? How would you like to handle it? What would be the process you would follow here? Don't say anything. Stop telling them what to do. Stop fixing it. Ask them, let them flail a little bit. Guess who else had to do that? You give them the opportunity to build their own confidence by trusting their own mind and not needing yours all the time. Right? Gosh, that's such an interesting problem you're facing, Stacy. What do you think you should do? How do you think you could handle that? What would you like to do? What do you think is your next best step based on what you know? That doesn't make me less valuable as the owner, the boss, the founder. It makes me the advisor. It puts me in a position of I actually probably know exactly what you should do. But what I would do may not be what you would do. And I want you to explore what you would do. That is what a sage does. The sage steps into a version of herself that isn't terrified, a failure, but doesn't cling to scarcity. She allows other people to achieve their own results as long as they align with a clearly defined framework of vision, expectations, values, roles, goals, measures, which is everything that I teach in one hour. Leader, trust them. But our lack of trust in others is rooted in our lack of trust in ourselves. And so that's why all of this journey is so vital. Because if you don't do this, if you are restless, if you are itchy, if you want more for this business, you know you're capable of, or you know you have served this business and it is time for you to step aside. You cannot do either until you address the elements I've been teaching through this series. So many female founders scale their business to fantastic revenue, profit, lifestyle impact, and then they flail, sometimes all the way to failure. And it is because of the elements that are missing. There's not a lot of new stuff you need to add. You just got to go in with a framework and make sure that you have built a business that can stand on its own. And not feeling needed is a huge reason why women never do that. That and their desire for constant control. And now is the time to let it go and find a new way. So at the conclusion of this podcast and this series, not really sure what my next episode will be, but what I do know is that we are designing a Beyond the CEO Live experience with me. We don't have the details on how we're going to offer it. Is it going to be in person? Is it going to be online zoom? Is it going to be 4 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks, 6 months a year? Because I'll be honest with you, this is a year's work. The seven set transitions I just provided for you is a year. One of the elements I didn't really even talk too much about. We will cover in Transition two, which is you developing a resource knowledge base that will become the IP for your organization. And that alone is a major resource for you to have. But it also will take some time. So I'm still putting together what this is going to look like. My sage clients, this will all be a part of your curriculum and your work with me. So you needn't worry. You know how that goes. But if you aren't a client yet and you're interested in what I've been teaching here, I would just invite you to go to the visionary CEO beyond the CEO. So that's thevisionary CEO beyondtheCEO. And add your name to the waitlist and we will give you the information. My expectation is that this will be live somewhere between mid October and mid November, and all the details will go out to our wait list. First, I'm super excited because, you know, for having done what I do now for 30 years and having run this business on my own for almost 14 years, what I can tell you is that the building a business that you can lead and then that you can leave are the two most important inflection points in your business that you must learn and they are the least talked about. But the women who figure those two things out create so much magic in their lives, and I would love that for you. So if you want to join my wait list, go to the Visionary CEO beyond the CEO and more details will follow.
Hey, gorgeous. So I've spent the last, what, six, seven episodes talking about beyond the CEO and what's next for you, and I'd like to do some coaching calls that will be featured on the podcast. I did that a few months ago and I'm going to do it again. So if you would like some coaching on any of the topics that I've talked about over these past seven weeks, go to the Visionary CEO Callin C A L L I N. That's the Visionary CEO callin and fill out all the information and we will get back to you to schedule a call and and then that call can be featured here on the podcast. I'll look forward to it. Let's go.
