The Launching Pad: Why Some of Us Have to Build Before We Leap | EP 597

A client story about a decade-long business partnership, a major life pivot, and the conversation that almost didn't happen. Plus the question I think every founder should be asking right now: what would the next version of you do, and are you willing to be her today?

Full show notes, transcript, and chapters at sheilabotelho.com/597

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Transcript

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The Conversation You Keep Avoiding

Sheila 0:01

Have you ever sat on a conversation for months knowing you needed to have it and had no idea how to start? I've been there, my clients have been there, and there's this specific kind of stuck that shows up right before a big shift where you can feel the next chapter forming and you have no language for it yet. I want to walk you through a story about exactly this: a decade-long partnership, a pivot into motherhood, and the moment that everything cracked open. Stay with me. Hi, welcome to the podcast. I'm Sheila Botelho, and I believe true success is built from the inside out. I want to tell you about a client that I worked with. And I'm gonna, of course, keep the details soft because that's the right thing to do. But the bones of this story are really interesting. And I think you'll see yourself somewhere in it. So she'd been in business with the same partner for a decade. They'd built something that I would call genuinely successful, global, profitable, recognized, and the kind of thing that from the outside looked like the kind of business that you'd be foolish to walk away from. It was an events business. So there was a lot of travel, a lot of energy output, a lot of being on for clients in very visible ways. And the brand had weight. People knew their name in their industry, and they got all kinds of bookings and partnerships that most founders dream of for years before they land. And she was also becoming a mother. Her capacity was changing. Her desires were changing. The travel that used to feel exciting was starting to feel like something that she'd outgrown. And she could feel a new version of her life forming in the background of every meeting, every event, every flight. You know the feeling, I imagine. When the thing that you used to love is still good technically, but something inside of you has moved on already. And the rest of you is trying to catch up.

When Success No Longer Fits

Sheila 2:07

And here's the thing she came to me with. She had no idea what her business partner was thinking. None. They'd been so busy building and so focused on the next thing that they hadn't had the kind of conversation that you have when you're sitting on the edge of a real shift. They were so much in momentum. And she was carrying this whole interior life of, I think I want something different. I think I'm done with this version of it. And I think I want to be home more. I think I want to build something else or maybe nothing else for a while, just to be a mom. And I have no idea how to bring this up without burning the whole thing down. And that is the part that most people miss when they're looking at decisions like this from the outside. The actual decision is not the hardest part. The hardest part is actually the conversation, the framing of it, the honoring of everyone in the room, including yourself. And the longer that you sit on it, the bigger it gets in your head. By the time most people come to me for these moments, they've been rehearsing the conversation alone for months, sometimes years. They've played out the worst case scenario in their mind so many times that the actual conversation feels almost impossible to start. So that is where we began. We didn't start with logistics or the buyout terms or the exit timeline or anything. Like what would the announcement say? We started with one question.

Getting Clear On What You Want

Sheila 3:43

What do you actually want your life to look like? Because here's what I've learned in all of these years of doing this work. If you don't get clear on what you actually want, you'll show up to that conversation already half resentful. You'll bring tension into the room that has nothing to do with your partner and everything to do with the fact that you've been holding all of this on your own for months and sometimes years. And while that resentment leaks, it leaks into other parts of your life. It leaks into how you talk to your team, your staff, your partner, your clients, the way you respond to emails, the energy you bring to calls. People feel it even when you think that you're hiding it well. And nobody wins, wins that when that is the foundation that you're operating from. So we got specific. What do you want the next year to look like? What do you want the next five years to look like? What does a Tuesday morning look like for you? What does the work look like if there is work? Because knowing that that was an option for her, she knows that was a real blessing, that that was an option. The question that followed up was what does the income need to be? What's the conversation you wish you could have if you knew it would land well? What does success look like for you in this new chapter? Not the one that you built in your 20s, the one that you're building now. And we let those answers be honest. We didn't have to be aspirational about them, which is really hard for many founders because, especially visionary founders who are very aspirational and everything has like a double or triple payoff to what they're actually doing, right? They just want to spread the goodness. I was looking for something unpolished and honest because the version that she'd been carrying in her head was being filtered through what she thought she should want, what she would be responsible to want, and what would look good to want. Have you been there? We had to strip all of that off before we could see what was actually underneath because truly what was underneath was simple. She wanted to be present for her child. She wanted income that flowed without requiring her to be on a plane every other week. And she wanted to keep her hand in creative work, but on her own terms. She wanted to honor what she'd built without being held hostage by it. And once we had that, we worked backwards into how to have the conversation itself, how to honor the decade they'd built together. You see, she was struggling so much because she respected her partner so much. So she wanted to be able to really give this conversation the sense of place and purpose and gravity that it really deserved. She wanted to lead with respect. And also to give her partner the same opportunity, the same question before just assuming what the answer would be. Because this is something I want you to hear. A lot of founders go into these conversations already convinced they know what the other person will say. How often do we do this in our lives? They've decided in advance that this is going to be hard, that the other person will resist, and that this is going to turn into a months-long negotiation. And sometimes that may be true. Sometimes things can get really messy, but often, often the other person has been carrying their own version of a similar conversation, and they've been waiting for someone to open the door.

Framing The Talk With Respect

Sheila 7:34

She had the conversation. And here is the part I love so much. And she went in so prepared for any kind of outcome that would happen from this conversation. Here's what happened though. The other person was relieved. They'd been carrying something too. They couldn't articulate it yet, though. They knew that something was shifting for them, but they didn't have the language for it. And the moment my client opened the door, the other person walked through it. And they had this deep conversation. And it was so loving and kind, actually. And obviously more than one conversation, but this first one was so good. And it was not a big dramatic moment. It was more like a series of honest exchanges over a few weeks. And they worked out what each of them actually wanted, what felt fair, what timing made sense. And they ended up scaling things back significantly, even while she wasn't yet pregnant. Like she was just gonna start trying to have a child. But she wanted to make sure that she had the spaciousness to feel really rested and healthy through that process. So my client moved into motherhood, and the other partner took a real pause to figure out what they wanted next. And here's what matters most. This is the part I really think that matters a lot. They left the partnership with respect intact, with the door open for future collaboration if it ever made sense. And both of them got to a better place because one of them had the courage to be honest about what she actually wanted. And the framing she chose made it safe for the other person to be honest too. And I'm telling you this story because I think a lot of us are sitting in this version, a different version of this conversation right in this moment. Maybe for you it's a business partnership, or perhaps it's a team structure that worked when you were smaller and it doesn't really fit anymore. Maybe it's a brand that you've outgrown. Maybe it's a client base that no longer reflects who you've become. Maybe it's simply the relationship with your own work that's shifted and you haven't said it out loud yet because you don't know what comes after. And that can feel scary. And I want to give you the bigger frame because this is the part that is so important to really hone in on.

Leaper Or Launching Pad Founder

Sheila 10:03

There are two ways founders tend to move when they're standing on the edge of something new, and you hear it all the time. One is the leap. You jump and you build the airplane while you're in the air. There are people that are built for this. Their design supports it, their nervous system supports it, and they truly do their best work when they're already in motion. They figure it out as they go. They thrive on the energy of having committed first and worried about logistics later. If that's you, you already know it. You've probably built your entire career on it, and it works for you. And I believe that you are an outlier. The other way is what I'm going to call the launching pad. And this is where you build the foundation first, you set things up, you give yourself the structure that you require, and then you go. Now, people who operate this way require a solid platform to spring from. And when they try to leap without it, they end up frozen or scattered or burned out or all three. And they look at the leapers and they think they should be more like them. And they spend years trying to operate against their own design. And it costs them. I'm one of these. I've spent enough years in the past trying to operate like a pure leaper, watching other people do it well, and telling myself I should be able to do it in the same way. And so, therefore, I can tell you with full confidence, it costs you when you force a paradigm that was not built for you personally, your personal design and archetype. It costs you in confidence. It costs you in execution, it costs you in the kind of momentum that you can actually sustain. Think about your own career for a moment. Think about the moments you've done your absolute best work. Were you flying by the seat of your pants and figuring out in real time? Possibly. Or were you operating from something solid, something you'd prepared, something you'd thought through? I bet most of you can answer that question pretty fast once you actually ask it to yourself. And once you know the answer, you have a piece of information that is worth more than almost any business strategy you'll ever buy. Because the rest of the work is just honoring that. This is where understanding yourself becomes a business strategy, not as a side thing, not as like a nice to have, but as the actual strategy. Because the founder who knows she requires a foundation will build one. And her business will reflect that solidity for years. And the founder who knows she's built to leap will leap. And her business will reflect that velocity. Both are right. Both are required at different moments, and both are wrong when applied to the wrong person. So my client was a builder. She required a foundation before she could move into motherhood, before she could have the conversation, before she could let go of the business. And we spent time building that foundation together. The clarity, the language, the financial picture, the timeline. And once she had the launching pad, the leap was almost easy. Well, maybe, maybe easy is not the right word, but it felt more natural. Because obviously, leaving something you've taken a decade to build, not such an easy thing, even if you know you're ready. But it was the next obvious step instead of a terrifying drop into the unknown. And that is what a real launching pad does. It turns the leap from an act of courage into an act of timing. And the courage was already in the building of the pad, right? The leap was just the moment that you finally use

More Options Than Stay Or Go

Sheila 14:01

it. Now, here's the piece I want to bring in because it changes how you make these decisions. In any given moment, you can have far more options that you can think. In fact, I was on a walk on the beach recently and I had this moment of realization. Right then, in that exact moment, I realized I could keep walking. I could also sit down on the sand and think for 10 minutes, stare out at the water. I could sit there for an hour. I could walk into the water. I could turn around and go back. I could walk up to a stranger's door and introduce myself. I could go home, shower. I could drive into the city and have a full content day. I could do nothing. I could call someone I hadn't talked to in a year. I could write the email that I'd been avoiding. I could take a nap. Like, look at all of those options of what I could do. They're not astronomical options. They're not like out of any kind of playbook. They're not super strategic, but they are options. All of those were available to me in one moment, on one walk. And most of us forget this. We get so locked into the binary of do I stay or do I go? Do I leap or do I wait? Do I have the conversation or do I keep avoiding it? That we forget there are dozens of options living in the space between the two extremes. And we make big things way too big and we get in our head about them. Hello, I've been there too many times to count. I'm still working on that one. And the truth is, most big things are a series of smaller things stacked together. If you can make a small, honest decision with yourself today, you can make a slightly bigger one tomorrow. And the day after that, the conversation that you've been avoiding for eight months becomes a thing you can actually have. This is a muscle. It's something that you work on, you work it out. It's not a personality trait, it's something you build. And you build it by practicing on it in the small things. Right. You practice on the things that are available to you right in front of you instead of the big stuff. For instance, something you're just about to do. And there are many ways that you can do it. There are many timings, many tones, many openings and endings. Notice how many options exist around something that felt like a single decision two minutes ago that I was sharing with you about just a simple walk on the beach. If that's true for the small things in your day, it is also true for the bigger ones. It's the same logic and the same skill, just at a different scale. And the reason I bring this in is because my client's whole shift came from realizing she had more options than she'd let herself see. She'd been holding the binary. Stay or burn it down, keep doing it exactly as it is, or walk away completely. And once she saw there was a third option, a fourth option, a fifth option, the conversation became possible and actually exciting. Like, how can we reimagine this? I love that word, reimagine, because it's imagination. The transition then for her became possible. The new chapter became possible. And there's a version of this conversation that involved buying her partner out and exiting completely. There's a version that involved selling the business to a third party. There's a version that involved her partner buying her share. There is a version that involved them both scaling back together and just still keeping the business. And there's a version that involved sunsetting the brand entirely or pausing operations and then reassessing in a year. There were probably 10 more versions that we mapped together that I'm not even naming here. The point is, there were never just two options. There were dozens. And the moment she could see the full field, she could choose with clarity instead of choosing from fear. So I want to bring this back to something I'd said earlier because I think it bears repeating. And that is that the hardest part of these moments isn't the decision, it's the framing. Once you can see your full field of options, the decision becomes a question of fit. Which one fits your life? Which one fits your design? And which one fits the season that you're moving into? That is a much easier question to answer than should I leap or shouldn't I? So here's what I want to leave you with.

Becoming The Next Version Of You

Sheila 18:54

If you're standing on the edge of something and you've been telling yourself you should just leap, I want you to ask yourself whether that's actually how you're built first. Because some people require a launching pad, and that's information and it's very valuable information for you. So use that. Use the launching pad, build the pad, give yourself the foundation. The leap will come when the pad is ready and it will feel like a natural step instead of a free fall. So if you're sitting on a conversation you don't know how to have, start by getting clear on what you actually want. Not what the responsible thing to do is necessarily. Not just what looks good. Certainly what we want to do things from a responsible place, but let's think about what you want. And, you know, just the knowing that the conversation gets dramatically easier once you've answered that question for yourself first. And the people on the other side of the conversation will likely surprise you. They've often been waiting for someone to open the door. So if you keep feeling stuck in a binary, look harder. Look at the small decisions in your day. Look at how many options were available to you on this morning's walk or your morning routine at all. Right? The way you had your coffee, your first hour of work, what did you do first? Multiple options are always available. Always. We just forget to look for them when the stakes feel high. And the question I want you to sit with as a result of this is one I'm asking myself too, actually. What would the next version of you do? And are you willing to be her today? Not at some future point. You're not waiting. Not when you're more ready or when the timing is perfect, but today, right now. Because the next version of you isn't waiting for permission. She's waiting for you to recognize her. And the moment you do, the launching pad starts building itself.

Expansion Season Invitation And Closing

Sheila 20:58

I'm bringing all of this into expansion season, which is opening very soon. So if you've been feeling the edge of a shift and you want a structured way to build a launching pad that you actually need before you leap, head to the show notes. All the details are there. Thank you so much for being here, and I will see you on the next episode.