The Path to More: How to Create an Exceptional Life After Success

Well, hello there. Welcome to the Leadership is Feminine podcast. How are you? I'm Kris Plachy. If you have been a long time listener, thank you for tuning in. And if you are brand new. Welcome. Here we talk about all things leadership, being a woman, ideas to ponder and think about tactics to try in your company.

I've got it all and we cover lots and you never know what you're going to get with me on any given podcast episode. So today I'm going to talk to you about the Sage CEO program. Sage CEO is a- I'm always reluctant to say things are programs. I don't know why that feels so limiting. Let's just call it an experience. It's an experience for visionary women who choose curiosity over scarcity.

When you reach certain pinnacle moments in your life as a woman, and you reach certain levels of success in your business as a woman, I have found that women consistently feel compelled, well not all, but many, feel quite compelled to ask even more questions.

Now, a lot of these women who have experienced levels of success are equal parts curious and also exhausted and then also a little restless and sort of having a, you know, a relationship with their own ambition, kind of like, what's next? What do I want? Why did I do all this? Do I still want it? If I do, do I want to do it this way? Maybe I'll change it.

And so as I thought about Sage when I started it, which is, we're going on three years ago, I wanted it to be a container to really be more about exploration and questions and poking at that curiosity part of you, who you are, rather than the tactical part of your brain that wants like to be told or, or someone to just show you the steps. I think we all need both at different parts of our own growth and development.

So, you know, I've been so incredibly fortunate with my Sage clients because these women are brilliant and intelligent and successful and also humble and curious and open minded. I have frequently written about my Sage clients and about what it means to be a Sage, and so what I thought I would do is share with you something that I wrote a couple, I guess, a little over a month ago that I just titled, 'What is Sage?'

And I wanted to put it here because I do believe that there's a lot of you out here in the world and I do believe that the work I do with my clients who are in the stage is kind of hard to define. A lot of my clients will tell you that, like people ask them, "Oh, what do you do with Kris and Sage?" and they're like, "I don't know. I just..." Right? It was like a client said to me just this past week, she said, "You just help us live like exceptional lives." Right.

And as I get older and I am mature in my professional experience and my professional competence and my own sort of, knowing and wisdom of who and what I am in the world and what I'm here to do, I really do believe that she captured it pretty well.

I just want to help women live exceptional lives. And it just so happens that women who lead big businesses, successful businesses, people are those women that I'm the most intrigued to work with, because of your dynamic of your circumstances of the push and pull of the unique challenges that come with being a woman with all this authority, power in her world.

And yet also this conflict that I think so many of us feel with all of limits that we've had, or believed we've had as we've, as we've grown up and sort of been informed by. So this, this cocktail that is unique. And that's why I don't really meet women, you know, who are trying to lose weight or who are trying to make more money or trying to, you know, rally after divorce.

It's not that I haven't coached those women, it's just that I seem to both equally attract and be attracted to that woman who has pierced the veil of business and entrepreneurial and leadership success in her own way, but she also finds herself on the other side of it. "Oh, gosh. Okay. Now what do I do? Who am I?"

I'm going to read you what I wrote. If you want this written down, just email me at hello at the visionary dot CEO. And just say, I'd love the, what is the Sage, whatever we'll call this article. And we'll be happy to get it to you so you can read it if that's where you're jam, but I'm going to read it and I would love to know what you think.

So what is a Sage? She was always known. She has always known, seen, and understood things without knowing why. Not with arrogance, but more often with confusion or curiosity, until her later years and maturity sets in, she's often dismissed her intuitive sense instead of listening to what it was trying to tell her.

She's a maverick, a pioneer, trailblazer, founder. New ideas and new ways of doing old things just come to her. Honestly, they seem obvious. But they're not obvious to most. Others regard her for her achievements and the path, or paths, she's forged, that are now easily followed by many. She is sought after for what she knows.

She is always on to her next step. Rarely relishing what she has created, and more so focused on what else she can begin. She has a quiet confidence, and yet still faces blind spots, either intentionally or unintentionally ignored, that limit her self trust and her self worth.

She frustrates easily when she has to repeat a process that she thought worked, only to find out it didn't, or that it won't sustain the results she's enjoyed. She's learned that lesson, hasn't she? Repeating feels like stepping backward and it will be until she embraces and believes in the wisdom she's continued to ignore that will illuminate a new path forward.

She is at a point in her life where she no longer has any patience for or any interest in small talk or petty topics. She knows her energy is powerful. And she wants to reserve it for those who will match her depth of understanding and shared commitment to meaning and authenticity.

The Sage seeks other Sage women who she can experience the connection she craves without the social obligations and niceties too often experienced outside of genuine Sage conversations.

She knows there is more to know, and she is only willing to invest in spending time and experiences with others who also agree that there is no pinnacle to stand on and broadcast you've arrived. But instead, to gather and connect and share and hold space for the birth of long ignored or dormant wisdom that she and others are ready to see.

The wisdom cocktails that are revealed at the gathering of the Sages is unique to each individual and rarely repeats itself. It is reserved for the special women who agree to join in on that particular conversation. The Sage gatherings are therefore not trainings, they are not masterminds, they are not programs, they are unique conversations, perfectly designed and facilitated for the women in the room who knowingly choose to contribute and receive.

When you've become a woman of exceptional success and means, when you've arrived at what only 2 percent of female founders ever achieved, over 1 million businesses, you are presented with a choice. You use your success as a badge that brings you the credibility and trust you think you deserve, or you leverage the wisdom whispers that brought you to this moment and you realize there are now only more questions to answer. That in order to truly be of service, the promise of this lifetime and others is to dig deeper, learn more, understand more, explore more, and do so in the presence of other Sage women who share this call to grow, to ask, to connect, to model, to teach, to listen, and to laugh.

A Sage realizes that the day to day challenges that life presents are simply invitations to find the answers that will resolve the current circumstances and illuminate the pattern, the reason, why challenges like these consistently present themselves. She knows when she partners with another Sage, she will not just solve for today, she is completing a lesson, if genuinely learned, that will end the pattern and embolden her for new, bigger steps.

A Sage is a woman who has realized the dream come true of a life and is ready to explore and set the course for a dream come true that she has yet to define and she feels a strong desire to reveal the magic of her life that can exist when you invest in believing in methods, ideas, and wisdom that most do not see or understand.

A Sage is a magician. She knows she has a potent, but often indescribable knowing. She is learning how to listen with intention so she and others can benefit from what feels like long locked away, knowing that we could all tap into if we chose it. A Sage visionary chooses to be a part of a collaborative that shares this path, to join other women and foster a safe space that invites unseen wisdom and ideas, and also one that fosters connection, laughter, vulnerability, and a playfulness she rarely can indulge.

A Sage knows there's always more to know. In truth, a Sage who has intentionally walked the steps of a Sage knows she will never arrive. But to her, that is not daunting, but deeply meaningful and compels her forward on the Sage's journey. Are you a Sage?

So one of the things that I think is important for all of us to acknowledge is the kind of connection we want to have. And as I've gotten older and maybe more honest with myself, you know, I know a lot of women who are my age who do have a harder time making friends. They have friends, like they have people that they love and adore, but they're all over the country. Sometimes it's a little harder to connect with people like in your immediate area for various reasons, but more so it's because there's different ways that we'd like to connect. And I think that whatever those ways are for people, they should do it.

And I've noticed with women, there are some women who just love to connect and just, you know, chit chat and gossip and talk about their kids and talk about their husbands or their spouses. And they're just sort of this, what I would call more sort of that traditional kind of social relationships. And I think if that's, your jam, you should do it all day, right?

Like I was talking to somebody the other day about a bunko group, and there's still people, I guess, who play bunko. I used to go to bunko. Bunko was never for me. I felt almost like I had eaten junk food. Like it was, it tasted good, but it was so unfulfilling and honestly unhealthy for my body when I was done.

So I know that in my relationships with my friends, my conversations are very different. I don't do chit chat. I don't do Gibby Gabby Gibbies. And again, I love it if you love that. I don't. I want to connect with you. I want you to connect with me. I don't want to be the one person in a room who knows everything about everybody and nobody knows anything about me because they don't ask.

I was just this weekend, we were, we have two baby birds nests that have spontaneously, I guess, not spontaneously, I have two little birds build, well, I guess there's a bunch of birds, but we have one in a brand new little tiny tree we just planted that has two eggs in it. And then we have another nest that a bird built on our wreath on our front door and it has three little baby eggs. And I'm so delighted that we have all these baby birds that are going to be born in our little house.

So our neighbor was walking up and I just said to her, "Oh my gosh, we have babies, we have little baby nests in our house, in our front door, in our tree." And I was so delighted. And I don't really know her very well. I was, I was trying to, I don't even know what I was trying to do. I was just delighted. And I, and she said to me, "Oh yeah, I had this last year. Yeah, you know, and then, you know, bunch of the, the babies fell out of the nest and then I had to call animal control and, you know, yeah. And you have to be, the swallows are really bad. Like every weekend we're checking for those."

And, she, my husband was outside with me. She didn't acknowledge what I said other than to say my least favorite phrase. "Yeah, I had that." And then she didn't stop talking for 10 minutes. And my husband, because he's much nicer than me, kept talking to her, like going, "uh huh. Yeah." Oh, I could tell he was trying to like, like, that jump rope game where you're trying to get in. I just stopped.

I was, I had been clipping some roses. I took my roses and I went in the house. I didn't say goodbye. I just walked away. And I told him when he came in, I said, that's it. That might've been the straw that broke the camel's back, but I will not have those conversations anymore in my life. It's to me, it's the epitome of rudeness to not acknowledge other people, but to just start to talk about yourself.

But in so many ways, we have become a society of people that just talks about themselves everywhere. I would love to talk to you and I would love you to want to talk to me. And I would love to be in a room as I do with women who want to exchange ideas, concepts, curiosity, confusion, their heart, their soul, their purpose, their anger.

And I'll leave you with this because I think we all need experts in our lives at different times. I believe there are things that we have to learn in order to do things in the world. But I think in our attempt to become people that have to learn in order to do things in the world, we've been so indoctrinated through our school systems and all the ways that and now even just with all the online training and online content consumption, consumption, consumption that we mistake that we don't know the difference between what I need to learn in order to do something versus the knowing and the wisdom, I have to access myself in order to become more of who I'm supposed to be. They're different.

I can't tell you what you need to learn to become this version of you, but you can. But that journey is an internal journey that can be expedited in an environment with other people who share the same vision and compassion for themselves and others to grow, to explore.

I think that that a gift of living is a gift and that if I don't tap into all of it while I'm here, what did I do? And I don't think everybody has to agree with that either. But I would like the women who do agree with me to know I have a space for you if this is what you want. If you're not, as crazy about getting all dressed up and drinking champagne and wine and doing those kinds of things together with- listen, if that's what you love, you should do that.

If you want to be in a woman's environment, but you don't want to be in the forest, dancing naked, taking ayahuasca by the fire. I don't do that. But if you want to do that, go do that.

But if you want to sit on some comfortable couches in some comfortable rooms in some comfortable clothes with other women who are very successful, but not interested in other things, they just want to be in their body and listen to their thoughts and feel their feelings and feel their energy and allow the magic of a group of women become a unique cocktail for their own wisdom, then I think you might want to talk to me about the Sage program.

So I guess this has been a long, maybe infomercial without me intending it to be, but I also want to leave it with this because that's, it really wasn't what I set out to do, but what I do want to say is that I believe that every woman who is listening to this podcast deserves a life of joy. She deserves a life where she gets to fulfill her dreams. She deserves a life where she is surrounded by people who love her, trust her, honor her, respect her and reinforce her self worth, her value, her intuitive knowing, her intelligence. I believe that every woman who is listening to this podcast is worthy of who she is. She has nothing to do to become more lovable, more worthy, more needed.

We all have days that we're unhappy. We all have days where we are elated, and what we have on all of those days is wisdom. And your wisdom speaks to you. And there are too many women who ignore it. And I want that to end. I want every woman on this planet to believe in what she knows is the promise of this lifetime.

But there are a lot of women who live in environments and with people and in communities where their wisdom is drowned out, gaslit, ignored, and it's so intrusive and so consistently insidious that they don't even know that their wisdom is really real.

So wherever you are and whoever you are and you're listening to this, just agree with me with that, that you, you get to go and be and do and want what you want. And that isn't a selfish act. Your growth, your investment in yourself is not a selfish act. Give the investment of financial support to yourself before you ever give it to someone else or your business.

Your growth will change your entire ecosystem around you. And maybe that's what you're afraid of. But when you develop who you are and you become more of you, you will tolerate less of all of that, whatever that is. And you know what I'm talking about, because everybody's that is different. But I think a lot of women are afraid of that.

So whether it's Sage or dancing naked by a fire or climbing mountains and singing songs or joining a girl band or getting dressed up in ball gowns and doing all the things. Listen to me, do the thing that fills your heart. Be with the women who make you sing inside, create a space or find the space where these people are, that you feel equal parts seen, challenged, sated, pushed, but always valued, always loved, always honored, whatever that is for you. Do that for yourself. You deserve it. And you didn't have to do anything to deserve it.

Remember that I asked you to be a part of my Catalyst podcast event, where I'm inviting you to become a visionary Catalyst, share the podcast link with women that you know. And as soon as you hit 20 shared links, clicks on those, we can measure that. I'm going to give you one of my bonus digital courses.

Go to thevisionary.ceo/catalyst. Get yourself registered. Grab the podcast link. Super easy, and please share it with women that you know that are leading in the world, because I'd love to be able to impact 20 million women. I know that when women feel more confident in who they are as leaders. It changes who they are in their lives.

Let's help women live and lead on their own terms. I can't wait to see how many clicks we get. Let's get it.