The Sheila Botelho Show
Sheila Botelho is a business strategist guiding visionary leaders to more profit, freedom, and self-trust. With decades of experience in wellness, sales, and transformational coaching, she helps founders grow businesses that generate wealth and impact—without burning out or dimming down.
On this show, Sheila sparks future-focused conversations about growth, leadership, and the shifting landscape of business in an era of rapid change. Her self-trust-centered approach equips founders to align strategy with soul, scale sustainably, and create a legacy of influence and abundance that touches every area of life.
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The Sheila Botelho Show
The Moment You Know Your Message Has Outgrown You | EP 545
🔗 Mentioned on this Episode: Show Notes 👈
This episode is an inside look at what happens when your message stops sounding like you. If you have ever spoken a line you have said for years and felt it fall flat in your own mouth, lean in. This conversation unpacks that quiet turning point in business when your identity evolves faster than your language, and your words no longer feel like a match for the leader you’ve become.
I share how this has shown up in my own life and in the lives of my clients, especially those crossing the six and multi six figure seasons of growth. There is a moment where your body knows before your mind does that your message needs to shift. Your energy changes. Your clarity changes. Your desires change. And your messaging needs to catch up. This is where true leadership begins, when you allow yourself to speak from the version of you who has been quietly waiting to take the mic.
If you are sensing a messaging disconnect, this episode will help you understand what is actually happening beneath the surface. It is not confusion and it is not regression. It is evolution. And the more permission you give yourself to speak from the truth you are living now, the more magnetic, clear, and aligned your business becomes. To support this deeper clarity, download your Vision Map, the tool that anchors every new season of your message and your mission.
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And I believe that's where true leadership comes in, from authentic integration, the willingness to live your message before you publish it, the courage to say, this is what's real for me right now, even if it's still unfolding. If you've been in a messaging disconnect lately, it might not be about finding the new words. It might be more about giving yourself permission to speak from the version of you who's been waiting patiently to take the mic. Hi, welcome to the podcast. I'm Sheila Botelho, and I believe true success is built from the inside out. Have you ever had that feeling that something you've said a hundred times suddenly doesn't land anymore? It's subtle at first. Like maybe you're in a conversation with a client or you're recording a piece of content that you've shared for years, and the words feel like an outfit that used to fit perfectly, but now it's like tucking at your shoulders. Something just feels off. Well, I felt that way many times over the years, and it used to bother me because for so long I believe that once you find your message, you keep it. Like a brand promise written in stone. But I've come to see that our words are living things. They breathe with us, they stretch and contract as we do. And when they start feeling too small, it's actually an invitation to make a change. Now I've watched this happen in my own business, especially in the last few years. The conversations that once lit me up started to feel flat. The DMs coming in were still kind and curious, but they weren't from the people who truly resonated with where I was heading. And that's when I knew my language needed to evolve. Because the message that brought me here isn't the one that's going to carry me where I'm going next. What it feels like when your old words stop working, it's almost like walking into a room that you've rearranged, and that's where I'm at right now, uh, in my home where I've just moved into. So you know everything in the room, but you keep bumping into the corners. Oh my goodness, the bruises on my legs right now, because your body still remembers the old layout. And with your words, you're saying the familiar phrases, but they don't open the same doors anymore. Your engagement may dip, of course, but deeper than that, your own energy dips. That's what told me it was time to listen. Sometimes it looks like realizing that the angle that you've been taking isn't relevant anymore. A great example of this in our world is how much things have changed since AI came onto the scene. For years, people sold content creation as the hardest thing to keep up with. Now a lot of tactical load can be supported by tools. So the conversation isn't about how hard it is to create content anymore. It's about how to make your message feel alive in a world full of content. That is a shift in consciousness. Other times, the signs are quieter. Maybe you start attracting clients who aren't a full energetic match for you anymore. They're lovely, but the work feels heavier than it should. That's your signal that the message you've been sharing is still calibrated to an earlier version of you. You've outgrown the container. And then there are times when the disconnect shows up in your own body. You finish a launch and instead of feeling proud, you feel really tired. Or you reread your copy and think, this used to sound like me, but now it just sounds safe. I've learned to honor that moment because every evolution in my business has started right there in that gentle restlessness that says, you're ready for a new layer of truth. When my words stop working, I take it as my cue to slow down and listen underneath the noise. And that is where clarity starts to whisper. It's also how I know my message has evolved by how my body reacts when I share it. If I feel lit up, if my shoulders drop and my heart expands, I know that I'm aligned. If I feel impatient, bored, or secretly resentful when someone responds, that's feedback. Not about them at all. It's about me. Resentment I've found is a sacred teacher. It tells you where you're saying yes to something your soul has already outgrown. When I started feeling that edge, I know that my message was moving on and it was time to catch up to it. Mentors and clients have been mirrors for me in that process. There's something powerful about being witnessed by people who see your magic even when you forget that you have it in you. And I have a few dear friends that I voice note with regularly, other entrepreneurs who get it. We talk strategy, life, family, everything. And every so often, in a totally casual message, one of them will stop me and say, Do you realize what you just said? That is big. It's humbling because half the time I don't realize it. I'm just speaking from my truth in that moment, not trying to teach anything. But that's the beauty of reflection. Someone else catches the brilliance you almost brushed past. And it goes both ways. They'll be sharing something with me about their day. And I'll hear a line that lands like lightning, and I'll tell them, wait, what you just said, write that down. That's your next post, your next chapter. These changes that we find in the exchanges that we have remind me how often our most resonant messages live in the throwaway lines, the words we say when we're not even trying. Mentors help too because they've seen this cycle before. They know how it feels to be in between languages, the old one fading away and the new one not fully formed. They hold you steady while you translate it all out. And clients, well, they are the living pulse of what wants to come through you next. Every question they ask, every moment of confusion or curiosity, and every time they have something to say about a product that you've created and how it's working or not working in their day-to-day life, they're handing you the language of your next season. But my deepest clarity always comes from my own reflections. Surprise, surprise. I have had breakthroughs sitting at my desk. That happens sometimes. But the ones that changed everything, they came on walks. They came when I left my phone behind or stuck it in airplane mode and let the noise quiet down enough to hear myself again. Just the other day, before outlining this episode, I caught myself scrolling. I was posting a reel, waiting for it to upload as we do, and the algorithm served me a feed full of genuinely inspiring content. I am one of those people who curates my feed so meticulously. And beautiful people are doing such meaningful work. But my energy was low at the time. It was the end of a work session. And as I watched, I started feeling that familiar wobble that hasn't come up for a while. Should I be doing that? Maybe I should pivot like this person. And the second I noticed it, I closed the app, I stood up, and I walked outside because I know that voice. That's not my intuition. That is fatigue. When I'm tired, everything outside of me looks shinier than what's inside of me. But when I rest, when I get hydrated and I move my body and I come back to my own rhythm, my truth resurfaces. And that is why reflection is a non-negotiable for me. My biggest breakthroughs, business, health, relationships, my spiritual life, have come in moments of solitude when I've made space to listen and not scroll. And what always amazes me is how once I capture those downloads, whether in a voice note, a journal, or a typed stream of consciousness, they end up being exactly what my community needs to hear. And this isn't because I strategized it, it's because I lived it. And that is the thread that I see with my clients also. The moment they stop trying to sound right and start sounding real, like themselves, everything opens up. Their messaging sharpens, their magnetism expands, and the right clients appear. When I think about how I've personally navigated messaging pivots, especially through this move and the evolution of my brand, I realize it's always been a mix of letting go and leaning in. Moving homes has a funny way of reflecting your business. You touch every project, decide if it still belongs in your next season, and bless what's ready to go, releasing it. Words are no different. During this move, I started sharing a little more from my personal world again, the stories, the shifts, the way life behind the brand actually feels. And for a while, I'd kept things mostly strategic, focusing on frameworks and systems, which is valuable, of course, but missing some of the warmth that people originally connected to. So I let the personal back in. Not every detail, just enough for people to see the human in the strategy. And in doing that, something shifted. The messages started landing deeper again because people don't follow you for your polish. They follow you for your perspective. So when I think about this whole idea of messaging disconnect, it really isn't about being off track. It's about noticing that who you've become now carries a different resonance than the version of you who created the last message. The stories that once served as proof of what's possible are still true, but they no longer capture the full range of what you can see. That's what happens as we grow. Our perspective widens. And when your perspective widens, your language must expand with it. The conversations you want to have right now sit at a different altitude. They hold more nuance, especially now, more empathy, more depth. And it's not about rebranding yourself, it's about tapping into and remembering that truer sound of your own voice. I see it happen all the time with women who come to me after crossing the million-dollar mark. They've mastered the structures, they've got all the funnels, the teams, et cetera. And yet something in their messaging feels mechanical. They'll say things like, I don't know why the words aren't landing anymore. And I'll ask, when was the last time you said something you did an edit first? There's usually a pause and then a laugh and often tears because they realize it's been months, maybe even years. They've been performing the earlier version of their message rather than speaking from the present one. And that's where the vision map always comes in. It's where you get to ask yourself, what do I actually want to be known for right now in this season of my life? Not what I promised five years ago, not what my last program sold, not what my last product was, but what truth lives in me today that's begging to be spoken. When you map that vision out, clarity arrives. And it isn't heavy. It actually energizes you. The old message feels like obligation, and the new one is like oxygen to your whole system. Sometimes I'll sit with women in that exact transition and they'll worry that changing their words will confuse their audience and they'll lose them. And I totally get it because you've spent years building trust. But what I've found is that when your evolution is authentic, when your audience sees you for who you are, they can feel it before you even say it. They actually anticipate it. They're just waiting for you to catch up. And that's how I felt right before shifting my brand into what it is now. The legacy framework started forming before I even named it. It was just a feeling at first, a sense, usually on a walk that came to me, that everything I was teaching about business growth needed to be rooted more deeply in purpose. So I started asking different questions. Like, what if success wasn't just about scaling revenue, but about expanding integrity? And what if the real mark of growth was how aligned you feel in your daily life? And as I started living those questions, the framework revealed itself to me. I didn't create it so much as document it coming through the download. And that's what your message will feel like too. It's not going to be a brainstorm. It's going to be like you're recognizing something, like, oh, that's what's been forming in the back of my mind all this time. It's like a remembering of what's already inside of you. And the beautiful thing is you don't have to do it all at once because messaging isn't a switch that you flip. It's actually a conversation that you deepen. And you start by following the threads of what feels most alive when you speak. Now, for me, that often happens while I'm coaching. A client will share a struggle. And in responding, I'll hear a phrase roll out of my mouth that is new, yet it feels ancient. It holds this resonance that makes us both pause. And that's when I know that I've found a seed of my next message. So I'll jot it down and maybe voice note a bit about it to myself later. And those tiny sparks eventually become the language of an entire new season. And that's exactly how self-care for business was born. I kept noticing the same pattern in client after client. Brilliant entrepreneurs pouring everything into their companies, but running on fumes personally. Their businesses were scaling, but their bodies and their relationships were really crashing hard. And one day during a session, I heard myself say, the health of the leader is the health of the business. And the room went silent. I felt it in my chest. That single sentence changed the direction of my work. That's how messaging evolves from lived observation, not theory alone. So I think sometimes that we underestimate how intertwined our lives and messages really are. The move I'm in right now has mirrored this truth back to me every single day. I'll be packing a box and something will serve as about letting go. And how even the most beautiful things can outlive their timing, like that's a thought that keeps landing for me. That's true for couches and for our copy alike. And then there are moments of receiving. Like when friends bring over those small gifts and acts of kindness that I shared about recently, each gesture reminds me that being witnessed and supported amplifies everything. It just energizes me so much and makes me feel like I'm exactly where I need to be. The same way a team amplifies your business, community amplifies your courage to speak from your present truth. It's easy to forget that though, when you're deep in production mode, when you're leading teams, when you're launching offers or recording content or deep in product development, it can feel like the safest thing to do is stick to what's proven. But proven isn't always alive. Sometimes it's a relic of what worked for a different version of you. And it's okay to let it go. One of the ways I keep my words alive is by listening to what my body tells me during creation. When I'm truly aligned, my words feel like they're arriving through me rather than from me. Maybe you've experienced this. My breath slows. I don't question the phrasing. I just know. And when I'm not aligned, I get tight in the chest, my mind starts looping. I start rewriting before I've even finished the sentence. And that's how I know I'm trying to sound right instead of sounding real and being real. It takes practice to trust that difference, though. The legacy framework helps with that because it guides you back to your original intention, the reason that you started your business, the deeper impact that you're here to make. Once you re-anchor there, your language reorganizes itself. It's like tuning an instrument. You can keep adjusting the strings over and over, but until you strike the chord against the right note, you'll always feel a subtle tension. Your mission is that note. And your words also are similar. They find their pitch when you play beside it. There's another layer to this, too, though. The one that comes after you've refined your message and start to share it publicly. This is where courage comes in because the world loves consistency, but true leadership requires evolution. It's like striking a balance between both. There will always be people who preferred the earlier version of your voice, and that is okay. You're not leaving them behind. You're leading by example. You're showing them what growth looks like when it's lived out loud. Whenever I step into a new phase like this, I remind myself the message I'm writing now isn't just for today. It's building the bridge to the next five years of my legacy. And that is where expansion season connects the dots. It's where you take that clarified vision and embed it into every part of your business, offers, teams, systems, product development, community, fulfillment, all of it. So it carries your energy cleanly because words are just the beginning. The embodiment is what gives them staying power. Seasons collective is the ongoing rhythm that holds it all. It's where the conversation continues long after the launch ends or a framework is mapped. It's where we remember together that growth is not a sprint. It's actually cyclical. There's a time for planting new language and a time for letting silence speak. Every single season of your life and business has both. When you're in a messaging disconnect, you're usually standing right at that threshold between the harvest of what you've been talking about and then the planting of what's next. It can feel uncomfortable, but it's really holy ground. This is where you remeet yourself. And I'll tell you this clarity doesn't come from forcing the new words. It comes from living the new truth long enough that the words become inevitable. That's what happened when I started integrating more story again. In fact, so at first I was hesitant. I thought, well, people want strategy, not personal updates. But the more I spoke from the reality of my days, the move, the shifts, the learning, the more messages I received from women saying, that's exactly how I've been feeling. It was like in the context of real life, the strategy became more clear. And that's what I knew. This is the alignment point strategy through humanity. And I believe that's what our audience is craving right now, all of us, not louder voices, but truer ones, not more information, but integrating what they're learning. They want to feel like you are thinking out loud and they want to sense that you're still in the work with them. I know I like that from the mentors in my life. And that's why I love recording conversations like this because it's not a lecture. This is like a reflection. You and I are sitting here together sorting through what is real and what is next. And maybe as you listen, you're already thinking about where your own words have gone quiet. Maybe there's a phrase you keep using because it once performed well, but now it tastes stale in your mouth. Or maybe you've been sensing that your next message wants to reach a different audience altogether. Wherever you are, I want to affirm for you. This is your evolution. This is what it's supposed to look like. When I look back at every time I've re-anchored my message, I can trace the turning point to one simple thing. I stopped trying to fix what wasn't broken and started paying attention to what was quietly calling me forward. There's always that little tug. You might hear it in the pause between sentences or feel it when you reread a post and think, this doesn't feel like the whole story anymore. That moment is really sacred. It's the point where your work stops being about sustaining momentum and starts being about sustaining meaning. I've learned that if you ignore it, your business will keep running, of course, but your spirit will start lagging behind. You'll still hit your goals, but it'll feel harder and the satisfaction will fade faster. And sooner or later, the misalignment will leak through in your tone, in your energy, and in your results. So when that tug shows up, the first thing I do is create space. I clear a morning to walk without earbuds, just listening to myself. Sometimes I'll bring a notebook, I'll sit somewhere quiet, like a cafe or a park bench, and just ask myself, what conversation do I actually want to be in right now? And again, going from an authentic place, not what is going to sell or what trend is taking off, but what topic makes me forget time when I talk about it? What story do I keep wanting to tell, even if no one is asking for it yet? That's usually where the new language lives. I had one of those moments a few months ago. I was journaling about the move and how for nearly three decades we'd built a life in one place. A lot of friendships, so many memories, every single morning routine was rooted there. And now, as we prepared to leave, I kept thinking about how we were bringing the essence of that life with us, but none of the exact structures. And it hit me that messaging works the same way. You carry the essence of your mission forward, but the structures, the slogans, the taglines and phrases have to evolve. The form can change while the spirit stays intact. That realization lifted so much pressure from me. I didn't have to reinvent myself. I just had to translate the same purpose into a new dialect. If you've ever learned another language, you know the feeling. So at first, you see all the words, you're like, how do these things, how are they pronounced? How do they sound? It's really awkward. You search for words, you overthink the grammar, but then one day you're suddenly a little bit more fluent. So you can express emotion again, like to tell a joke or maybe asked for where to eat, something even like comforting someone. And that's when you realize you're not learning anything new. You're remembering another way to communicate what has always been inside of you. That is exactly how it feels when your message realigns. It's like your soul finally finds the right words again. And what's beautiful is you don't need to have the whole paragraph right away. You can start with the sentence, a truth that feels undeniably like you. Whatever it is, speak that sentence aloud, let it echo, then build from there. I've noticed that once you give voice to even one line of truth, the rest of the language starts to organize around it. It's as if your message has been waiting for you to open the door. In that way, messaging isn't a strategy, it becomes like a relationship with your message and with the people you're sharing it with. You meet it again and again. And each time, it shows you a clearer reflection of who you've become. That's what the vision map and legacy framework were created for. They are more than like a worksheet situation, they're mirrors. They help you see your own evolution in real time. You get to track what's changing, what's staying in your world, and what is asking for a different expression next. You can revisit them monthly, quarterly, yearly. And each time they'll show you a different layer of yourself. And when you pair that with expansion season, that's when it all comes alive because it's one thing to articulate your truth. It's another to embody it in your business model with your team and your systems and even the client journey, of course. I think about one of my clients who went through this exact process. She'd been running a successful consulting agency for years, but every time she tried to write a new copy, she'd hit a wall. She said, I feel like I'm describing a business I built five years ago, not the one that I'm leading now. We walked through the vision map together, and within a week, she saw it. Her true mission wasn't just about efficiency and operations, it was about restoring humanity to corporate culture. Once she owned that, everything changed. Her offers, her pricing, her team meetings all came into alignment. And the messaging practically wrote itself. That's what happens when you reconnect to purpose. The right language rushes in to meet you. So if you're listening right now and sensing that tug, the one that says, your old words don't quite fit anymore, I want you to know that this is expansion of consciousness going on for you. You're being invited into a higher frequency of communication that matches who you've become. And this is where I circle back to reflection, because even though mentors and peers can mirror our I have this ritual right now, whenever I feel a shift coming on, I step outside and lately it's been this. I lean against a tree and I'll look up either through the leaves or through the branches to the sky, and I'll take a deep breath. I'll close my eyes and I'll just ask, What part of my message is ready to retire? And I sit with that, or stand with it, depending on the weather. Sometimes nothing comes for a while, and then out of nowhere, a phrase floats up, and it may be something I've been saying on autopilot that suddenly is like, This is this is what it's meant to be. I I've known this and I've been saying this all along. Then I write it down and I thank it for getting me here. And then I ask, what truth wants to replace it? It's such a simple practice, but it's opened entire new pathways in my business because every time I release an old phrase, space opens for something truer. And truth is magnetic. The more aligned my message becomes, the less I need to market. Conversations start finding me, partnerships appear that feel divinely orchestrated, and the right clients reach out saying, I don't even know how I found you, but I know we're supposed to be working together. That's the power of resonance. And here's the beautiful paradox. The clearer your message becomes, the more room you have for mystery. You don't have to script every single outcome. You just keep speaking from where you are, and the next season reveals itself to you. That's what I've been leaning into as I record this episode, even trusting that the stories, the lessons, the small reflections you're hearing are exactly what you need today. And it's not because I sat and perfectly planned out a whole framework of what I was talking about, but because I've been living it honestly. And I believe that's where true leadership comes in, from authentic integration, the willingness to live your message before you publish it, the courage to say, this is what's real for me right now, even if it's still unfolding. If you've been in a messaging disconnect lately, it might not be about finding the new words. It might be more about giving yourself permission to speak from the version of you who's been waiting patiently to take the mic. You're already fluent in your next language. You just need to trust yourself enough to speak. And when you do, the people who've been searching for you will recognize that sound instantly. It's the tone of truth, and it cuts the Through all the noise. So here's what I invite you to do after you listen. Find a quiet space, bring a notebook, open a voice note on your phone, and ask yourself a couple of questions, like the ones I asked earlier. What conversations feel heavy right now? What stories feel too small? And what truth feels too alive to keep inside of you any longer? And then just speak. Don't filter yourself, don't plan. Just let the words come. That is your next message. And if you want help translating it into your business, into offers, launches, leadership, start with your vision map. It's the compass that brings you back to your mission every single time. From there, the legacy framework will help you articulate your deeper impact and the message you want to be known for. And when you're ready to bring it all to life with support and community, that is what expansion season is for. You don't have to do it alone. You just have to start where you are with the words that feel true today. Because those words are already the bridge to your next level. Thanks so much for listening. Go to the show notes to see the links that I mentioned. And I look forward to seeing you on another episode.