The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

179 ⎸ Managing Your Energy in Business with Emily Leahy

• Serena Shoup, CPA • Episode 179

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In this interview episode, we've got Emily Leahy sharing her incredible insights on managing energy in business, especially for us ambitious women out there. Forget the hustle; it's all about syncing with your personal cycles and making life work for you. You won't want to miss these gems!

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • optimizing energy cycles, especially for women, and viewing performance through a feminine lens
  • how women are often perceived as more emotional at work
  • why it's important to work with, not against, our natural rhythms
  • managing burnout by figuring out which energy "zone” you’re in


Resources mentioned in this episode:


Meet Emily

Emily Leahy is the founder of The Feminine Template and certified executive performance and leadership coach trained at Brown University. With over a decade of experience building companies and coaching simultaneously, she's connected the dots that truly matter. Living in San Francisco, Emily has supported side-hustling, VC-backed, bootstrapped female entrepreneurs and corporate leaders. This journey has shown her that women perform differently than men and possess dormant superpowers waiting to be activated. She's on a mission to leverage physiology to revolutionize work, wealth, and wellness for ambitious women. By aligning with natural cycles and rhythms, she helps women harness their energy, sustain optimal performance, and lead with innovation and influence.


Connect with Emily


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Serena:

Welcome back to the Ambitious Bookkeeper podcast. Today I have a special guest on. Her name is Emily Lahey and we are going to be talking about, women and business and cycles and lots of feminine things. So if you don't want to listen to this, this is your cue to skip ahead. But I highly encourage you to, even if you are male or female or identify as something completely different. I think it's valuable to hear the conversation anyway. So welcome, Emily. I'm so excited to have you on.

Emily:

Yeah, I'm excited for this conversation. It's going to be juicy.

Serena:

Yeah. So give us a little background on who you are and how you help people and all the good stuff.

Emily:

Yeah. So I was originally born in Boston and I ended up living in a lot of different places and have experienced a lot of different opportunities to build different businesses. So I feel like I've lived nine lives in one in a very short period of time. I ended up moving out to California and New York and Portugal. I've been building businesses for 15 years. in three different industries. And I've also been trained as a certified performance and leadership coach at Brown University. And I've been exploring performance this whole time that I've been building businesses. So I'm really interested in like, what is cutting edge? What is going to help us move forward in innovation, but also in our wellness. So how can we bring both together so that we can really truly sustain the journey of, Building businesses, or if you're in the ecosystem, you know, you're an accountant, you're helping startups, you're helping other businesses. If you are ambitious, like how do you really drive your ambition for it? So you can feel like you're making the impact that you want to make and feel fulfilled.

Serena:

Yeah, I love that. Well, this is the Ambitious Bookkeeper podcast, so I know a lot of our listeners identify as ambitious that's something that I've come to kind of recalibrate around, I guess, the past couple years just from things happening in life and like getting more in tune with my health and things like that. It's like, it's been a journey. So I'm really excited to have you on to, to talk about this. And I have, I have kind of dipped my toe in to like, figuring out how to work with my cycle instead of against it and letting things just flow more easily. So yeah, I'm really excited to dive in. So how did you get into like this whole side of, I guess, performance? Was there some certain like instance or events that happened that you were like, okay, I need to look into this or yeah, give us a little,

Emily:

You know, I feel like my history has been following the breadcrumbs and connecting dots and it always takes time because it's never linear. And I experienced, you know, a health crisis when I was really young. I struggled with an eating disorder. I almost died. And I was doing outpatient treatment and that's when I realized how disconnected I was from my body. And how important it was to be on this path of, you know, going towards my goals, but not at the cost of my own mental wellbeing or physical wellbeing. And so that really put me on a track to understand how embodiment was so powerful and how to prioritize different things, how to block things in my schedule, how to make time for meditation and yoga and all these aspects. And I got. You know, really into alternative wellness how can you achieve greatness without drugs? Because at the time it was like, well, if you don't want to be anxious and you want to feel relaxed, then you take this, you know, there wasn't actually a lot of tools back in the day when I was in my healing journey. And but I was always interested in performance. I was always fascinated by attention and focus and how do you make something happen? How do you take something from nothing and make it something? How do you take something and turn it into something else? Like, it takes a lot of grit and it takes a lot of time and energy. And so when you're in that zone, you can use a lot of adrenaline. And I know that I could get really excited, always ended up being like a lot of energy and then no energy. And this burst and bust cycle that went on for a while. So I thought, you know, maybe I'd use yoga and meditation and bring in these tools. And it did help me, but there was something I was missing. And so it took me years to actually realize, wait a second, I'm working like a man, but I'm a woman. And what does that mean? It means like I go through different energy dips, but I'm not really looking at that or strategizing it. And there's no one really talking about it. So I thought maybe there's just something wrong with me. And then I realized, wait a second. I thought then when I realized what was going on, I was like, am I late to the party? Like, were there people who did figure this out? And yes, I would read books and realize people figured out, but it was like side conversations. It wasn't like a giant party.

Serena:

Yeah.

Emily:

So I was like, well, there is no party, so I'll create the party. Like that's essentially like how I realized, like, wait a second. This is something that isn't common knowledge. You can find it if you look for it and you can maybe discuss this with people because it's so obvious. It's like, Oh yeah. Like I go through a slump, like this time of the month for me, but we. Don't truly honor that. And we don't truly create strategy around it. So that's when I started getting more deep into, okay, if there isn't a strategy, let me see what I know about performance so far and how to create strategies for women and managing energy.

Serena:

Yeah, I resonate with that so much of just like the bursts of adrenaline and energy and then nothing and it's like Now I'm at a place where it's like when I am in that slump and I'm not inspired and I'm not motivated I just allow it but whereas before I would just beat myself up and just try to push through it. And that's what ultimately results in burnout, I think.

Emily:

Yeah,

Serena:

Which is like pushing through the things when your body is like, no, no more, please no.

Emily:

it's, it's wild. And I had a tweet go viral. When I moved to Portugal a few years ago, it had like 168, 000 likes and 30, 000 retweets. It was about burnout. And it was like, the sneaky thing about burnout is you push through today by borrowing from tomorrow. The quote, and you know, people really resonated with it, men and women, but I think especially women, because that's what we're doing is we're borrowing from tomorrow's reserves. And then we never really experienced what peak performance feels like. I just find it so fascinating. Women could know that if you really maximize the times when you did have the high energy. And gave yourself the rest. You wouldn't be experiencing like a sense of jet lag. Women experience perpetual jet lag. It's like this forever fatigue that women can just be in. It's like this cycle and you can push through, you have a little bit more energy, but it's like, you're running on that 10 percent battery. It's not still not enough to really achieve. And peak performance. Well,

Serena:

there is to like, how does one maximize the time and like, then allow for the rest? It requires a lot of mindset shifts, right? Especially if that's how you've been operating. It's like, oh, well, I know I'll sort of recover later on and I'll just go get back on the horse and whatever. So what is, what do you usually recommend?

Emily:

I love how you just you know, already foreshadowed this piece around mindset because I think intuitively we do know what we need to do, but there's a dissonance and there's this separation between like actually acting on it because what happens is we find ourself in a circumstance that's really justifiable and we're like, I can't. This cycle I got to push through because XYZ is happening. We don't realize as ambitious people, how much pressure we're putting on ourselves internally. And like, yes, there might be other people who are expecting us to stay consistently driven all the time, but that's going to benefit their priorities. It's not necessarily going to benefit the sustainability of our performance. So the first part is to honestly look at your calendar. You have to look at your calendar and be like, all right, where do I begin? Like my bleed week, like my menstruation cycle. What, like when does that start for me? And then looking at the days leading up to it, because that's typically when your energy is going to drop. So this is what I call the pullback period of time that you would pull back more. It doesn't mean that you're going to do nothing because we don't live in a perfect world. And listening to this might be mothers. They might be caregivers for sick parents. They have like a leadership position or they have a lot of clients that they're working with. So it's not going to always be perfect, but. The question is, during that time, how can you do a little bit more of the inward work rather than the outward work? So pulling back could just be like, this is time when you're reassessing and like you are planning, but you're more like taking things off your to do list than you are adding on. And then when you have your energy start to return to you at the end of that menstruation phase, which is usually like, could be five to eight days. Give or take. That's when you can start to make better decisions. That's when you can start to have more complex thinking involved and be like, all right, now I'm going to start this project. Now I'm going to get on more calls. Now I'm going to start to take on more. And again, it's utilizing the two weeks where you have a lot of energy. And understanding that it takes a little bit of time for you to literally sync up with yourself. So for people who've always been overriding themselves and always using adrenaline, there is going to be a transitional period where it's like, Hey, you may not feel completely energized on the weeks that you normally would be energized if you were syncing up your cycle, if you've been overriding yourself for a long time. So it's just this understanding that it's not going to be like, boom, and then I do it. And then I feel energy. And then I feel completely in touch with myself. It's like, you have to think about like flying all over the world and being jet lag, cause you're flying to London and then you're going to fly into Dubai. And then you're going to fly to Asia. And then it's like, you would be really exhausted just because you're home and you come back to America doesn't mean that all of a sudden your energy returns. And like, you know, it takes a while to get back to your time zone. So that's how I see it is like, if you're overriding yourself, now is the time. to start to, you know, pull back and look at how do you start to regulate yourself? Regulation is really key. It comes along with, with cycle syncing. So it's about like, how can you pull back and de stress in high stressful situations and not put yourself in stressful situations when your body's already in distress and you're on your own period. Like that's how I, it's really, it's really basic, but again, the disconnect is how we're used to pushing. And we forget, we forget about our body. We forget about listening to cues.

Serena:

Yeah. One thing that comes to mind for me is like, it's amazing when things line up perfectly. For example, this last week I was at an event. Actually, it was like basically a week long thing. I went down a couple days before it, and, co hosted a one day event for bookkeepers with one of my colleagues in the industry, Alyssa, the workflow queen, if you're listening. And we hosted that event. And so it took a lot of energy. And then I rolled right into attending another like huge event and just like, I call it peopling. I'm an introvert. There was a lot of networking. And Amazingly, it lined up really well with my energy timeframe of my cycle. But like, I don't know how it would have gone if it didn't miraculously line up with that. So, and I, think that's one of the things that comes to mind, like as a bookkeeper, we have the same, like same deadlines every month, but like what if the week that you're supposed to be doing calls with clients always ends up on a not good week to be doing that. Like, what can somebody do to like, cause we can't just change when a month ends, like when a calendar month ends, we can't, our industry is a little bit different than like, you know, other industries where you can plan your projects around things like ours just has a consistent like deadline every month and it doesn't shift. So like, what's your suggestion in those situations?

Emily:

Yeah, that's a good question. So I think this is really new, right? Of understanding like your cycle and understanding again, that things don't work out perfectly. It's beautiful when it does. And it's just very synchronistic. I think it's important to realize that you can do anything on your, period. But you may need a everybody's got a different cycle, maybe someone has a perfect cycle that doesn't land on the end of the month. And so for them, it's not a big deal. But if your period does land around the time when you have a lot of meetings, it's realizing, okay, you may need a lot of rest. And if you can do again, less during that time, because if the meetings just take a lot of energy, maybe you're not putting pressure on yourself to do social events in that evening. Or maybe like you're not like trying to be there for all your friends and text and be a really great texter and respond to everybody. Maybe you're giving yourself time where you're not doing a lot of emails. And if you've got kids, maybe that's the time that, you know, you ask your partner for support. You ask your community for support. So it's about the ask and it's about Taking the pressure off because when you are in your high peaks of energy, like so we have the menstruation phase, then we have follicular, ovulatory, and then we have luteal. So the luteal, those like bookends, those are when we have a little bit less energy, and the follicular and ovulation cycle, or part of our cycle, that's when we have the most. And so, Those calls may not be a big deal to you. You can like talk to your friends, you can do all these things. You can take care of the kids, but when you're on your cycle, it will be a different phase and there's nothing wrong with you if you're feeling tired. And I think it's just giving yourself grace and hearing. And so I think preparation is everything. and so when you're prepared, then, you know, like, Hey, like, this is the time I'm gonna make sure, like, that's just my priority. Does that make sense in terms of. It's simple, but it's like in practice, it can be difficult for people who are very driven and expect consistency from themselves and expect, like, I should be able to do this. I see everybody else. I want to keep up with everybody else. You compare yourself. So, Knowing yourself really well and knowing the kind of things that you deal with and you know, are there things that you can do with your clients, like having camera off, which would just save you time from not putting on makeup and be able to wear sweatpants. And like, there's a lot of ways that I've looked at this of like, is my time and energy usually going towards? And sometimes it's just the glam. Sometimes it's just putting, getting my hair done and the makeup. And if I can be sitting on my couch or if I can be like really, really cozy in that moment and have like a backdrop and nobody knows I'm sitting on my couch with like a heating pad on, there's a lot of ways that you can bend your reality to be comfortable and then just do it. The bare minimum in that time so that you have energy when you need it most in the other parts of your, your month.

Serena:

Yeah, I love that. it is simple. Like this is one of the questions I've been asking myself to like be able to help the community. So I'm so glad that you came on so we could talk about this because like for some reason, like I've done some of those things, but it just didn't really dawn on me that that's a strategy. Like I guard my calendar pretty well. And so I already don't have a lot of calls. And so that's also a good practice to get into, I think, overall, is to like, bake in more free time, which never ends up free, but like, bake in more empty space on your calendar so that you If things do land during your cycle or even if they don't, it's more time for you to execute the project that you want to work on or do a little bit of networking that you hadn't planned on. So it's like, if we just stack our calendars back to back every day, there's no time to do the work and there's no time to recover. So,

Emily:

optimizing fluctuations is how I put it. Optimize your fluctuations versus aim for consistency. And when we honor ourselves as women, this is something that I have a scientist from Harvard working with me now, and we're going to be doing more studies. But something that we talk a lot about is this difference between men and women, biologically speaking. Now, according to some studies that she was telling me about, men learn a lot more through competition and grit, but women learn through collaboration and pleasure. And so if we look at, you know, how we're treating ourselves throughout the month, and if we are going to achieve more because we're in a pleasure state. I find that really fascinating because this is what I've intuitively been doing over the past, I would say five years, is looking for how can I have pleasurable moments. I say luxuriate, like how can I luxuriate like even when things are like stressful because that's when I truly shine because that's where I'm present and my presence is my superpower as a woman. So if I can be in my body and I can feel good that I'm present, if I'm present, then I'm going to go a lot further with my sales calls. I'm going to go further with my clients and keep them as clients and retain them. I'm going to be able to just build relationships if I'm out networking and I'm going to just be in a better mood so that I'm not reacting, even if I am feeling emotional because I'm like, okay, even like my period is not an excuse to just react like, like, oh, I'm feeling this way right now. And. I'm going to take care of myself in this moment, so I'm not explosive on this person because these emotions will pass and I'm just getting irritable right now. So it's, it's really understanding yourself in like a radical way so that you can achieve your goals and looking at performance through a feminine lens versus masculine one, because we really only have a masculine performance lens unfortunately in the world. So we're comparing ourselves to that constantly instead of going by our own playbook, which is. Looking at like, what do we need to thrive?

Serena:

Oh, I love that. And just what came to mind when you were talking about the like emotional reaction and being explosive, I'm like, well, no wonder women have such a reputation in the workplace of being explosive and emotional because we're forced to just push through our entire cycle and have the same level of performance in the corporate environment. So it's like a light bulb just went off. It's like, well, you know, it's not necessarily our fault. Yeah.

Emily:

women aren't aware because what's happening is they're overthinking and underfeeling. Everything comes back to a woman being in her body. And this was the correlation, right? Cause like. I came from a background of having an eating disorder, being totally disconnected, like a chicken with its head cut off. Like when I started yoga, I was like, Whoa, I think this is the first time since five, I felt my hands on my feet. Like I was like, I feel so grounded in this moment. And then I've been on this journey of, of really understanding what is the correlation between a woman being in her body and being able to achieve everything that she wants to achieve. And. I didn't realize like how much we were not seeing our period as a report card. It's just something, if you want to have a baby, it was just all about. So when I was going through my eating disorder, like the one thing that they kept pushing was like, well, you're never going to have a kid if you don't get your period, it was never like, Hey, your period is really important to you. And this is part of your performance in your health. Like that wasn't a conversation. It was just a threat. It was just a threat about. So when we start to see, when we start seeing period and productivity as something that's interconnected. It changes the game on like what women were created for. It's like, we're, we're here to create babies, but we're also here to create businesses and, create things that are going to be very innovative that the world will benefit from. And I think we are just so dynamic and complex. So I don't think we live in a world. In this 24 hour world where we have a 20 day cycle that is out to get us, it's just that there's a lot of misunderstanding and a lack of education. Because I meet men all the time who have wives and they very much understand that they go through hormonal fluctuations. And sometimes they're like, Oh my gosh, what you're doing is amazing. Not that women aren't, but women have conquered the art of pushing through, and now it's confusing sometimes to be like, Hey, here's a new operational strategy. Like they're bringing flips and they have to go through like a whole identity crisis to be like, wait a second. There's an easier way. But I figured it out. I figured out a way to get there, even though they're exhausted. So it's really fascinating. Like it's easier for men sometimes to be like, wow, I need to learn this because I want women on my team to be high performing. I want to build those high performing teams. Yeah, it's, it's really fascinating. It'd be surprised how many men are really into this. It's, it's cool. They just don't. Yeah. Yeah.

Serena:

And The other part about it too is when We realize how easy it is. like, this is what I've been experiencing the last year or two. Like the more I've been pouring into my health and listening to my body, the less I've actually been working, but the better performing my business has been. And it feels like cheating. Because it's not as hard as it used to be, if that makes sense. So it's like, once it, once you actually experience the ease, it's like, this must be a fluke. It's going to catch up to me. Like, this is too easy. I must be missing something.

Emily:

I love that for you because once you start to experience that, you build a new level of trust. There's a few things that I look at when I'm working with clients and, their relationship to control, their relationship to trust, their relationship to risk. And when it comes to utilizing these performance techniques, You're going to see better results. Now it may not come right away because everybody will have their own journey and they have their own background with their thoughts, with their behaviors, with their values, with their goals. Everybody has a different situation, but when you start to work on this, it's really huge. And another piece that I also focus on is that this work is very common sense. All right. It's like, you can't really argue with some of the things that we're talking about. It's like, yeah, it makes sense. Right. We're talking about physiology. We're talking about what's going on in the body. I've been really deep into like spiritual understanding of feminine, masculine energy, but it's really elusive and abstract. But when we talk just about the body and what's going on in the body and how it affects the brain, you really can't argue with it, right? These principles make sense. However, in practice, it can take a lifetime. To truly surrender and honor and know what it really means to connect with your performance and connect with like what's there without holding back. And sometimes that like not holding back is actually like the letting go. It's like allowing for some space rather than like booking everything up in your calendar. If again, you're trying to get more clients, you're trying to make more money, It can be really scary because hustle or grit or grind, whatever you want to call it, like, it usually gives you some result. So if you're getting some result from it, kind of tricky to just be like, let me try something completely different. And then maybe for a little bit, I won't get the same result, but then I could get a better result. Yes. Does that make sense?

Serena:

Yeah, it does. Because that was the exact thought process I had. I was like, well, you know, what I did here got me there, but like, I, I think there could be a different way.

Emily:

Yeah,

Serena:

And it's not like you have to just turn one off and turn the other one on. Like it's a dial. You can dial things back. You can start blocking off your calendar. Just start with one day a week and then see what happens. Like, Guarantee your clients are going to find time to still schedule with you, right? And then dial it back a little more until you just have a couple days a week and eventually your clients will get used to it.

Emily:

Yeah. Well, and it's funny that you said this as well, like, the way that I teach, like, energy management is that energy management is not this binary chart that you see on Instagram where it's like, this is an energy giver and this is an energy taker.

Serena:

Yeah.

Emily:

Um, and I know there's some people who are listening and that might have kids and it's like, your kids could drain you. What are you going to do? Like put them on the side of the road. Like, Oh, you're draining me right now. Like out you're out. And like, Oh, reading a book right now is really going to serve me. I'm just not great with my client right now. Like we all have commitments. We all have different things that we are expected to do as adults. And like, we can't just categorize things as like energy givers, energy drainers. But what we can do. is look at how we effort towards the things that we are committing to, that we don't always want to do every day. And effort is not an on off switch. It's a spectrum, just like you were saying how it's like, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. And the energy dashboard is a framework that I come up with after working with, you know, thousands of clients and doing a lot of work and helping them build capacity to do more because burnout and fatigue doesn't come from, um, Just driving yourself to the ground. It can also come from doing unfamiliar things. And there's that success threshold and you can get bogged down and you can feel not ready or tuck yourself out of it and just get really, really tired. Like your nervous system will kind of say, well, essentially what's going on. So how do you manage your energy to actually reach and grow without going overboard? And then also without not totally dissociating. So I created a whole framework for this. And there's four different zones. Slack, which can be like restful or can be dissociative. Like, right? Doom scrolling or watching Netflix, like for the whole night. And then your reality the next day of like, you still have your problem. But it can also be like, you're meditating or you go to yoga or you're just like actually resting and sitting on your couch and just enjoying the moment with your dog. And then there's slide zone, which is more like cruise control. Which, when we're ambitious, we don't really allow ourselves to be in cruise control. It can also feel a little bit unfamiliar, like, just letting things be a little bit more in ease. But it can also be where people get stuck because they get bored, you know, and it's like, sometimes things You're not meant to be in that slide zone for too long. Cause it literally can be your comfort zone. I don't really see that too often with ambitious types, but when it comes to the stretch zone, this is where we're going to feel kind of like a hot potato. Like it can be really uncomfortable because you're like, Oh my gosh, the growing pains are here. Oh my gosh. Like this is, it can really be easy for an ambitious person to glide right by stretch and go into strain because intensity. Is a bit more familiar for some people instead of actually stretching and growing, but when you're in strain mode, like you're not going to really accomplish much, you're going to sacrifice yourself to get to the goal, but then you're back to like. That, exhaustion and usually dissociation. You're not going to go to rest right after going into strain. You're probably going to be like, I got a doom scroll or I got to find a way to go. So there's this whole spectrum and we want to stay out of strain and we want to stay in the virtue of each zone. And when you start to understand your cycle, Then you can start to apply this energy management system to it because there's women out there who may not have their period if they just had a baby, or if you have an eating disorder, you might be missing your period, you might have PCOS, you might have endometriosis, you might have some kind of syndrome that you don't really know what's going on, but your period is missing or it's irregular. So we have to understand that every woman is going to have their own period. cycle. It's not going to be like perfect for some women where it's like, great. And some women are on birth control. So there's a lot of things going on out there and not every woman is going to be verbalizing it, but because I've worked with so many women, I can see like a big range. And so creating an energy dashboard system is really helpful for them to see like, okay, what are my options? What are my choices? So then I can best apply myself in this moment and long term have as much energy as possible. Cause it's not about performing at your maximum every single day. It's more about closing the performance windows. The days that are usually the worst for you are a little bit less and shorter. Like that's really the goal. It's not being number one. It's not being like, yeah, like the top 1 percent in the world. It's how can you just make your worst days go away as much as or like those moments in the day that, that you really struggle with.

Serena:

Yeah, so you mentioned irregular cycles. And so this brings a question to mind. I used to struggle with. I mean, I didn't think it was a struggle, but I used to not have a regular cycle. so I know a lot of women out there do have an irregular cycle and they might be wondering, well, how do I track my cycle if I don't have a period? Is there something that you have people do like just tracking their energy levels or other symptoms that can kind of illuminate where they are? and do they still have a cycle? Like this is a question mark. I'm like, what about those

Emily:

I mean, I had a client who got her uterus removed because she had endometriosis and the pain was so bad and for so many years that she had to get surgery. So she had to remove her uterus. I mean, there's a lot of different things that you can do if you want to. Your cycle is irregular. I would always, you know, consult with a doctor, make sure that you're doing your due diligence and going to like the medical field for that, obviously. And I have clients who, you know, they have a team of people if they're going through some of those difficulties. But what I do on my end is definitely supplement with the energy management piece. and helping them stay in their body because for some women, not all, but for some women, a big part of it's going to be the stress. And that's why I was really missing my period for many years was because I would just get really stressed out and it would affect my regularity. But again, every woman has her own health journey and her own health history. So I think it's important to advise the doctor. But what I do on my end is creating like a roadmap. Like performance strategies, because if you don't have that predictability, it is learning like, what can I do in this moment with my energy? And regardless, it's like, it really comes down to the given moment, how you're feeling, And, you know, what are my options of how I'm going to effort towards this today? And when you're feeling really exhausted and you don't have that person helping you and holding your hand with you, sometimes you might slip into, well, I just got to push forward. Just got to override myself because as women, we're trained and unconsciously, we're also trying to prove our worth because we have to look at the history of being a woman in the workplace is that, you know, we were trying to find a seat at the table for so long. So there was a reason why so many women, maybe our mothers were overriding themselves and we learned that behavior and it's just been instilled in us. So we're trying to undo a lot. And accommodate for our health now. Cause we know too much. Like we have the whole world at our fingertips, anything we want, any moment. That's why like a lot of the students I work with, I I've been going into Harvard to speak and mentoring them. And Boston is where I'm at right now. And so there's just a lot of amazing, smart, intelligent women out there. And they're ahead of the game because they just grew up with technology. So they have a lot of information about their health and now they're How do I like use this information and actually go into the workplace with it? And so that's, I think the big part of it is like, there's so many ways you have so many choices and a lot of it is going to be advocating for yourself, creating those boundaries and not trying to compare yourself to others, especially men and really working with your own playbook. But if you can have someone that's helping you and guiding you, who's a few steps ahead. You get that coach and you create a performance strategy. That's huge. And like a lot of the work with even BJ Fogg, who is a behavioral scientist at Stanford, love his work. And for, again, for ambitious people it's tiny habits. It's how can you do two minutes of something over a period of months and then eventually increase it so that you're not trying to change your life. Overnight, but you're instilling these anchor points throughout the day. And I have like a whole system also that I've created for a lot of women of rituals, rhythms, routines, and the rhythms are going to change based on like where you're at in your cycle, if we're able to figure that out. But even if someone doesn't have a regular cycle, we can kind of figure out what their rhythm of like, Hey, when do you usually have the most mental energy during the day? And like being your own scientist, able to track that. And so it's really like this intersection of intuition and data is like what I love. Hehe.

Serena:

Oh, I love that. Okay. I'm sure we could go on forever about this subject. So this seems like a good point to have you share where people can connect with you if they want to delve into this topic more, because we barely scratched the surface today. And I think this is the first time I've ever had anyone on the podcast as an expert in this field. I've Talked a little bit about like my own experiences, but yeah. So where can people go to learn more about how you help or resources that you recommend to start with?

Emily:

So something that that would be really helpful for people who are listening to this episode. I have a efficiency archetype quiz that will tell you how you manage your energy. And there are six different categories that you could fall into. So if you go to thefemininetemplate.com/quiz, and I'm sure you'll put the link in there somewhere. You can find out which archetype you fall into. And for three days, you'll get emails that will support you. And it also connects with that energy dashboard that I was speaking about. If someone is interested in doing any kind of one on one work and they're looking for someone to hold their hand and create a performance strategy and work with the performance equation, which is really about eliminating a lot of that mental interference that stops you from creating a new operational system and really going into a much more efficient way. More amazing world where you can have more results for less work. I do a lot of one on one work still. And so people can check that on the website, it's backslash coaching. So those are two things that I offer. And then when it comes to like Instagram, X where else am I? TikTok, LinkedIn, so I'm kind of everywhere. You can probably find me and you can find my personal account or you can also find the feminine template. So that's either the feminine template or my username is I am Emily Leahy. So you can follow either one or both. Yeah. And if anybody has any questions or, you know, you're have a certain curiosity around something you know, feel free. To reach out or shoot me a DM on one of those accounts and I'm happy to answer.

Serena:

Awesome. Yes. I will link all those resources in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom with our listeners.

Emily:

It's been great.

Serena:

appreciate it. All right. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon.

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