The Business Relationship You’ve Been Ignoring (And Why It’s Costing You) | EP 478

Is your business feeling more like a to-do list than a calling lately?

In this minisode, Sheila reframes the way you approach growth—not with more hustle, but with deeper alignment. Drawing from decades of experience guiding high-achieving women, she shares why your business is not just a system to optimize but a relationship to tend. If you’ve been pushing through fatigue, stuck in comparison loops, or feeling disconnected from the thing you once loved to build, this episode is a reset.

You’ll walk away with questions that ground you, insights that empower you to honor your season, and a fresh lens that will help you lead with clarity, creativity, and calm. This isn’t about slowing down for the sake of it—it’s about learning how to grow in a way that actually works with your life, not against it. Because the success you’re building? It gets to feel good, too.


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Chapters

• 0:00 Business as Relationship, Not Machine
• 1:41 Seasons of Thriving vs. Depletion
• 3:16 Leading with Intentional Rhythms
• 5:31 Treating Your Business as a Living Entity
• 7:21 Honoring Your Current Season
• 9:03 Call to Action and Closing

Transcript

Sheila: 0:01

What if your business isn't a machine, but a relationship, a living, breathing entity that evolves through the seasons, just like you do? In this mini-sode, I'll share how honoring your natural rhythms could be the key to sustainable success. Hi, welcome to the Connect with Sheila Botelho podcast. I'm committed to helping you reconnect to your purpose, elevate your wellbeing and build your version of a happy, successful life. You're listening to a mini-sode where I share an insight designed to help you live into what lights you up this week and today. I'm talking about something I wish more women founders were hearing from the start. Your business is not separate from you. It's a relationship, and how you nurture that relationship directly impacts the growth, the flow and the joy you experience inside it. And here's what I've noticed after working with high-performing, heart-led women for decades and walking this entrepreneurial path myself.

Sheila: 1:07

The seasons when we're thriving in our businesses usually coincide with the seasons when we are most connected to ourselves. When I'm well-resourced, when I'm in tune with my body, when I've been honoring my own rhythms, I lead better, I create more clearly, my audience feels it. My offers land, my energy is magnetic. And, on the flip side, those times where I've ignored my inner needs to keep up with some imaginary timeline or to prove my worth. That's when everything starts to feel forced, draining, stagnant, and maybe you've been there too, when the thing you once felt so passionate about starts to feel like an obligation, a job or, worse, a relationship where you're the only one giving. By the end of this mini-sode, you'll see your business with fresh eyes, as a living relationship that reflects your internal state. You'll walk away with a new way to measure success and lead from a place that honors your seasons, not just your task list. And here's how we're going to explore it why cyclical seasonal strategy is a power move, not a weakness. What it looks like to treat your business like a relationship, and a few key questions to ask yourself when you feel like you're running on empty.

Sheila: 2:40

Picture this you wake up on a Monday morning and, instead of rushing into output mode, you pause. You tune in to how your body feels, how your energy wants to be expressed that week. Maybe you're in a season of blooming, like launching something really big, or maybe you're in a quieter season of integration. Either way, you'll lead with intention. You communicate with your team or your audience from a place of clarity. You give your business your attention, but not your identity. And it works. Clients come in, content flows because you are leading from fullness, not depletion.

Sheila: 3:22

Can you imagine the ripple effect of running your business this way for an entire year? Now let's contrast it. So let's instead say you ignore the signs. You push through your low energy days. You try to keep up with the momentum you set last month, because slowing down feels like failure. Your content feels off. You start resenting the very work you created. Your relationships suffer because your nervous system is on edge and one day you wake up and think is this really what I wanted?

Sheila: 3:58

This is what happens when we forget that we are seasonal beings trying to operate in a system that rewards constant output. You are not a machine. You are not meant to function in the same energy every single week of the year. And your business, truly it's not a machine either. It's a relationship and it's time to tend to it like one. This is really important because I've been reflecting on this a lot lately, especially as I navigate conversations with women like you founders, leaders, creatives, who are building incredible things while also holding a lot in their hearts, homes and calendars. So let's explore what it really means to grow your business.

Sheila: 4:44

As a woman living in rhythm with your seasons, you know we're often taught to treat our business like that machine push a button, get a result, optimize, scale, rinse and repeat. But what if, instead, we took that good stuff and we thought of our business as a relationship? Because honestly it is. A business requires attention, presence, communication, check-ins and care. It needs your energy, it stretches you and, just like any other relationship in your life, it goes through seasons. Some seasons feel expansive. You're in full creative mode. You're sharing, building, birthing new ideas. You're visible, magnetic, productive. It feels amazing, you're on. Other seasons are quieter, maybe more internal. You're thinking, visioning, reassessing, tending to your home life, your health or your emotions. And it doesn't mean you've disappeared, it just means the work has moved inward. But if you're operating from a hustle culture mindset, this inner season might trigger guilt.

Sheila: 5:55

And I want to tell you something important there's nothing wrong with needing a season to breathe. In fact, it's sacred and it's strategic. When you start relating to your business as a cyclical living thing, like a relationship, it changes how you show up. It gives you permission to lead from your full humanity, not just your productivity. It invites grace. Let's look at your real life. You have relationships with your partner, kids, friends, maybe aging parents. All of these relationships require a version of you, and not always the same version. You don't show up the same way in every season for everyone, so why do we expect to show up the same way in our business all the time? Your business deserves to receive you in your fullness, not a one-dimensional version of you trying to perform, overgive or constantly prove. Right now, you might be in a season of growth, or maybe you're in a season of deep healing. Maybe you've just launched something new and now your nervous system needs to recalibrate.

Sheila: 7:03

This is where feminine energy comes in. It's intuitive, it honors flow, it listens to the whispers of your body and your spirit. It doesn't force, it receives and from that place of grounded knowing it takes aligned action. This isn't about doing less or lowering your standards. It's about leading from a place that includes your wellbeing, not one that ignores it until burnout arrives.

Sheila: 7:32

If you've been feeling like you're juggling it all your business, your family, your wellbeing, your ambition this mini-sode is your permission slip to pause and ask one, what season am I in right now? Two, what is my business asking from me? And three, what am I needing in order to show up in overflow, not depletion, because the truth is, your business is not separate from you. It mirrors your state. It amplifies the energy you bring to it. When you're aligned, it flows. When you're exhausted, it resists. And when you honor your season, you lead with a kind of clarity and calm that no strategy alone can offer.

Sheila: 8:18

So what would it look like to treat your business like a relationship, to have honest conversations with it, to take it on walks, to tend to its future while also nurturing your present? We're not machines, we're women, we're humans. We are seasonal, cyclical and profoundly intuitive, and when we honor that, when we lead from it, our businesses become not just profitable but truly sustainable. If this resonates from you and you want support aligning your strategy with your seasons, tap the link in the show notes to download the Embodied Success Method and Meditation, a free resource that's designed to help you grow your business from a place of inner trust, outer clarity and soulful impact. It's something people turn to again and again during the creative process of building something significant. Your business is your calling, but you are not its servant, you are its steward. Lead it well and lead it whole. Thank you so much for tuning in and I look forward to seeing you on another episode. Big blessings you.