HER Extraordinary LIFE By Design

Join Leslie Gaudet and Dr. Angela Zeng, medical scientist, TEDx speaker, author, and founder and CEO of Karviva Wellness Beverages, for a rich and deeply meaningful conversation about what resilience truly looks like when you stop confusing it with endurance — and start building it with intention, wisdom, and balance.

Angela's story is extraordinary in every sense of the word. Raised in a family with generations of Traditional Chinese Medicine wisdom, she went on to earn a PhD in Pathology and conduct postdoctoral research at Northwestern University — before making a bold and purposeful leap into entrepreneurship that would even...

The meeting gets canceled. Someone else handles dinner. The task you finally delegated is no longer yours. And before the relief has even settled, you’re already asking, “Okay, what else can I get done?”

In this episode, I’m looking at what happens after support actually works. Because sometimes capacity comes back and productivity claims it before we’ve even noticed there was another possibility. The hour gets another task. The opening gets filled. The space we worked so hard to create never really becomes ours.

And that raises a different question: What did you think...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Lorraine Ansell, writer, speaker, advocate, and author of The Surrender Agenda, for a deeply honest and quietly powerful conversation about what it truly looks like to design a life that thrives — not in spite of chronic pain, but alongside it. 

Lorraine came from a corporate marketing background before hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome entered her life and rewrote everything she thought she knew about herself. Rather than letting her diagnosis define or silence her, she chose to do something remarkable with it — she wrote a book, built a platform, and became a voice for every perso...

Have you ever noticed that the option asking more of your time, energy, or effort can still feel like the more responsible choice?

In this episode, I explore why that happens, how some of the rules we use to make decisions can stay with us long after the season that created them has changed, and what it can cost when we keep making today’s choices by yesterday’s rules.

I talk about the difference between a choice that is genuinely worth the effort and one that simply feels more legitimate because it’s harder, why mo...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Randi Roberts, Executive and Career-Life Coach, for an honest and deeply relatable conversation about what it truly means to do the inner work — and why that work is the foundation of every bold, purposeful career pivot. 

Randi spent decades building a successful career before reaching a moment that so many high-achieving women know all too well — everything looked right on paper, but something essential was missing. Rather than pushing through, she chose to pause, do the hard inner work, and make some courageous choices that led her to a completely different and deeply fulfi...

If you’re going through a life transition, career change, personal reinvention, or season of uncertainty, you may be asking yourself what comes next.

In this episode, I explore a different way of thinking about resilience: not simply bouncing back or returning to who you were, but deciding what you want to create after something has changed.

We talk about outgrowing what once worked, sitting with uncertainty when you don’t have all the answers, and recognizing that sometimes there’s nothing broken that needs fixing. You may simply be ready for a new chapter. Becaus...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Dr. Stacy Haynes, Licensed Professional Counselor, educator, five-time author, nonprofit founder, and ministry leader, for a warm, grounding, and genuinely eye-opening conversation about what it truly means to protect your mental and emotional peace while pouring into the lives of everyone around you.

With over 25 years of experience in mental health, Dr. Stacy has spent her career at the intersection of family wellness, emotional development, and faith — seeing families in therapy, training clinical supervisors, supporting neurodivergent youth through Little Hands Community Promise, and speaking at women's conferences across the country. Her award-winning book Po...

Why can you have space on your calendar and still feel completely drained?

In this episode, I talk about the difference between having open time and actually experiencing that time as your own. I also share something I’ve been noticing in my own life: even when I’m not actively working, part of me can still be mentally and emotionally tethered to what "might" need me next. The laptop is open. Someone might call. There’s work waiting. My business needs attention. The time looks free, but somehow it doesn’t feel free, and sometimes exhaustion isn’t on...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Samantha Gibson, trauma-informed leadership consultant, Certified Trauma Recovery Specialist, author, and founder of Brave Strategy Co., for an honest and deeply moving conversation about what it truly takes to protect your mental and emotional peace when life has asked more of you than most people will ever understand.

Samantha's story is extraordinary. As a survivor of coercive control, a mother of five, and a woman who spent over two decades leading at the highest levels of corporate operations, she knows firsthand what it costs to hold everything together on the outside while something...

When did “done” start automatically meaning “next”? 

In this episode of HER Extraordinary LIFE By Design, Leslie Gaudet explores what can happen when high-performing women move so quickly from one task, decision, or responsibility to the next that they barely pause to register what they’ve completed, what it required from them, or whether what comes next still deserves their time, attention, and energy.  

This conversation looks at the connection between mindfulness, mental wellness, emotional awareness, energy management, and intentional decision-making — not as a lesson in slowing down or becoming less ambitious, but as an opportunity to...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Erin Mahoney, licensed mental health counselor and proud USAF veteran, for a warm, honest, and genuinely grounding conversation about what it truly takes to protect your peace, regulate your emotions, and build the kind of inner resilience that actually holds up under the weight of a full and demanding life.

Erin brings a rare combination to this conversation — the discipline and strength of a military background alongside the deep empathy and clinical expertise of a mental health counselor who has dedicated her career to helping people feel seen, supported, and safe enough to he...

In this solo episode of HER Extraordinary LIFE By Design, Leslie explores what happens when something small gets under your skin and stays with you longer than you expected.

Maybe it was a short reply, a comment that hurt your feelings, a tone you weren’t expecting, or an interaction that left you wondering, Did they really mean it that way?

This episode looks at taking things personally, overthinking, emotional awareness, self-awareness, hurt feelings, and emotional wellness through the lens of an ordinary moment that suddenly starts taking up more space in your day than yo...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Denise Lynn Morrison, Doctor of Physical Therapy and Certified Integrative Health Practitioner, for an honest and refreshingly direct conversation about what it truly takes to heal your relationship with food and your body at the root, not just the surface.

Denise is the creator of the Emotional Eating Rewire, a trauma-informed method built specifically for empathic, introverted women who are tired of dieting, shame, and quick fixes that never actually address what is underneath. With over 15 years in holistic health, she blends sharp humor, science, and deep compassion to help women move from...

A meeting moves from 2:00 to 3:30. You say, “Sure.” But that one change may mean reworking the rest of your afternoon, moving something personal, shortening a break, or carrying unfinished work later into the day.

In this solo episode of HER Extraordinary LIFE By Design, Leslie explores the invisible mental load that can come from constantly recalculating your day and the difference between having an open space on your calendar and actually having the capacity for what is being asked.

This episode looks at flexibility, decision fatigue, attention, white space, and the hidden cost of being the...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Heather Simco, transformation coach and founder of Complete Concierge Solutions and Sober Boss Babe, for a raw, honest, and deeply empowering conversation about what burnout is really telling you — and what becomes possible when you finally stop pushing through and start rebuilding from within. 

Heather's journey is anything but ordinary. Growing up in a dysfunctional family environment, navigating her own personal battles, making a remarkable transition from MMA to ministry, and building 12 years of sobriety alongside a thriving coaching business — she understands from the inside out what it costs to live out of align...

You don’t have to burn your life down to create more of the life you actually want to experience.

In this final solo episode of the August burnout series, Leslie explores burnout recovery, energy, work-life balance, and what intentional living can look like for high-performing women who are ready to stop postponing the life they actually want to experience.

From sitting behind a desk in a beautiful place she rarely takes time to enjoy, to realizing that the version of success that mattered in one season may not belong in the next, Leslie reflects on...

In this special archival episode, Leslie Gaudet revisits a raw and unforgettable conversation she had with Amity Morales, transformational mentor, teacher, guide, and CEO — a woman who has been in business since she was 15 years old and who knows firsthand what it costs to keep going when everything inside you is asking you to stop.

This is not a polished framework or a step-by-step guide. This is two women sitting down and telling the truth about what burnout actually looked like in their lives — the physical collapse, the nervous system in freefall, the moment the body finally said...

In this deeply personal solo episode, Leslie shares an experience from her legal career where the work wasn’t the problem. She knew how to do the job. What she didn’t fully understand at the time was the emotional toll of working with someone who repeatedly questioned, belittled, and undermined her.

Even after she finally left, the experience followed her into her next position—showing up in something as ordinary as asking whether she was allowed to send an email she already knew how to write.

This conversation explores workplace burnout, difficult professional relationships, self-d...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Cass Uk, award-winning entrepreneur, former NHS Registered Nurse, author, speaker, and Founder and CEO of Tolicious, for a bold and deeply personal conversation about what it truly takes to build a purpose-driven life and business without burning yourself out in the process. 

Cass's journey is anything but ordinary. After years working as a registered nurse across Nigeria, Dominica, and the UK, she survived a life-threatening postpartum recovery, left the security of her nursing career, and built Tolicious from the ground up while working full time — eventually becoming the first Black female founder to sec...

Burnout doesn’t always arrive with a dramatic collapse.

Sometimes it shows up in the ordinary things you keep explaining away.

The sleep that hasn’t been great lately. The irritability you blame on a busy week. The work you normally enjoy that suddenly feels heavier. The Sunday afternoon feeling that starts before the weekend is even over.

In this solo episode, Self-Care Strategist Leslie Gaudet explores burnout, chronic stress, energy, capacity, and the patterns high-performing women can miss because they’re still functioning, still delivering, and still getting things done.

Becaus...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Lauren Golen, embodiment teacher, breath-based practitioner, and coach to founders and women leaders, for a deeply honest and powerful conversation about what is really running everything underneath decades of high performance, and what becomes possible when a woman finally learns to listen to her body before her mind catches up. 

With thirty years of body and breath-based practice and her own experience leading through real consequence, Lauren works at the intersection of embodiment, discernment, and faith. She doesn’t add better frameworks on top of existing patterns. She goes underneath them to the pla...

Some weeks are genuinely busy. But what happens when “I just need to get through this week” becomes the sentence you keep repeating every week?

In this solo episode, Leslie talks about burnout, chronic stress, energy management, capacity, and the hidden cost of constantly pushing through. She shares what she noticed during one particularly full week—the rearranging, the overworking, the instinct to make everything fit, and the realization that being capable can become the reason we keep asking more from ourselves.

For high-performing women who are used to handling a lot, the early signs of bur...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Rena Duell, business coach at One TEAM Partners and 25-year entrepreneur, for a refreshingly honest conversation about what burnout really costs — and what becomes possible when a woman finally decides to build her business and her life differently.

Rena knows this journey from the inside out. After years of juggling leadership, motherhood, and constant demands, she hit a breaking point that impacted her health and forced her to completely rethink how she was living and working. That breakdown became her breakthrough and today she is the coach she wished she had back then.

There are moments when the woman everyone sees and the evidence you can point to don’t seem to tell the same story.

You speak with confidence. People trust what you know. You have created something real. And privately, you wonder:

Am I becoming this woman, or am I pretending to be her?

In this deeply honest episode, Leslie explores the tension between an established identity with decades of proof and an emerging one still being built. She speaks openly about business, revenue, time, the pressure to have arrived by now, and what it...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Jacqueline T. Hill, strategic marketing advisor and fractional CMO, for a refreshingly direct conversation about what it truly means to build a business that doesn’t just make money — but keeps it.

Jacqueline brings a rare perspective to this conversation — 17 years as an educator and Principal combined with nearly three decades in marketing. Where most focus on generating more leads, she focuses on what happens after the lead converts. Her work centers on profit margins, client retention, and the internal systems that determine whether a business grows sustainably or constantly chases its own tail.<...

Balance.

Alignment.

They're two words we hear all the time. We chase them, talk about them, and often measure ourselves against them.

But what if we've never stopped to ask what they actually mean?

In this episode, Leslie explores why our definition of a balanced and aligned life isn't meant to stay the same forever. As we grow and move through different seasons, the questions life asks of us begin to change—and perhaps our definitions should, too.

This isn't an episode about finding the perfect balance.

It...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Carolyn Jahnke, Founding Attorney and CEO of Athena Legal Solutions, for a refreshingly honest and empowering conversation about what it truly means to build a woman-owned business on a foundation that is not just successful but genuinely protected, sustainable, and built to last.

With more than 20 years of experience inside nonprofits, startups, and corporate organizations, Carolyn brings a perspective to legal strategy that most attorneys simply cannot offer — one that is grounded in the real-world realities of running and growing a business rather than the fear-based messaging that keeps so many women entrepreneurs av...

What happens when a capable woman can tell the truth only after removing her name?

In this episode, Leslie reflects on the growing number of intelligent, accomplished women using the anonymous filter to share what they’re carrying. Not because they don’t know how to speak, lead, or make decisions, but because they understand exactly what their name, role, reputation, and relationships may ask them to consider before they say what is true.

This conversation explores the tension between being known and being honest, why a written post can’t always carry what a human...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Tina Hughes, immigration attorney, law firm owner, and business coach, for a straight-talking and deeply empowering conversation about what it truly means to build a law firm (and a life) that doesn’t require you to sacrifice one for the other.

Tina spent years doing everything herself, feeling the relentless pressure of constant growth and the weight of a business that depended entirely on her. And then she made a bold, deliberate decision to change everything. By implementing strong systems, restructuring her pricing and workflow, and making the identity shift from attorney to CE...

In this episode, Leslie Gaudet explores the moment when a request sounds reasonable, your calendar can technically make room, and yet something in you already knows the yes is going to cost more than anyone else can see.

For the woman who knows how to adjust, rearrange, compress, and make things work, capability can become hard to question. The work gets done. The deadline is met. The people around you are supported. But somewhere in the middle of making room for everything and everyone else, the things that mattered to you may have quietly been moved again.<...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Angela Conway, attorney, social entrepreneur, and founder of the Lady Justice Initiative, for a bold and inspiring conversation about what it truly means to build something from nothing — and dedicate your career to changing systems that were never designed to work for everyone.

Angela has spent decades leading initiatives across more than 30 countries, advising cabinet-level government officials, and championing women in law at every level. Before founding the Lady Justice Initiative, she turned a single idea at the American Bar Association into a 19-country operation across the Middle East and North Africa — and toda...

Join Leslie Gaudet for a reflective solo episode about the moment you realize the way you learned to succeed may no longer be the way forward.

In this episode, Leslie explores the old rules many women carry in professional and entrepreneurial spaces. Be dependable. Be prepared. Be easy to count on. Say yes when you’re needed. Prove you can handle the room. Prove you deserve the seat.

Those rules may have helped you build credibility, trust, opportunity, and success. But there may come a point when the same rules that helped you rise begin as...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Sacha Hughes, author and storyteller, for a raw, honest, and deeply human conversation about what it truly looks like to find your way back to yourself after life has taken you completely apart.

Sacha's journey is not a polished success story. It is something far more real. After losing her mother, navigating a high-pressure career in London recruitment, divorce, and single parenting, she spent years lost in grief, self-sabotage, and the desperate search for love in all the wrong places. And then, slowly and imperfectly, she began to choose herself.

In...

Join Leslie Gaudet for a reflective conversation about the moment when the life you built still works on paper, but something in you begins asking whether it still fits the life you want to live.

In this episode, Leslie closes out the June series on Building an Extraordinary Life by exploring why extraordinary can’t be reduced to one image of success. Through her guest conversations around career, home, support, business, service, freedom, and quality of life, she looks at the tension between admiring someone else’s version of success and telling the truth about what would actu...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Kirsten Graham, business strategist and outsourcing expert, for an honest and empowering conversation about what it truly means to stop surviving your business and start building the extraordinary life you actually envisioned when you started it.

With a decade of experience helping entrepreneurs build businesses that work for their lives — not against them — Kirsten has guided countless women through the process of putting the right systems, support, and foundations in place so they can finally grow with confidence and clarity. 

In this episode, Kirsten opens up about the why behind her missi...

Join Leslie Gaudet for a deeply honest conversation about the kind of decision that feels hard not because you do not know what you want, but because what you want and what feels safe are both true.

In this episode, Leslie shares the tension she has been sitting with as she continues building her coaching business, her podcast, the Gatherings, and the work she feels called to do, while still holding onto the legal work that provides dependable income, predictability, and stability.

Through her own experience of living in beautiful Playa del Carmen while realizing...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Kim Costa, Top 5% Realtor® and creator of The Wheel House Method, for a fascinating and eye-opening conversation about the powerful relationship between the spaces we live in and the extraordinary lives we’re building.

Kim's journey to this work is anything but ordinary. She built Clarity Farm from scratch — a beautiful property that ultimately left her feeling isolated and disconnected. And then she won an essay contest for The Oprah Winfrey Show and made the bold decision to decline filming because her home simply didn’t reflect her true self. Those two defining moments...

Join Leslie Gaudet for an honest conversation about the space many high-achieving women find themselves in but rarely talk about openly: the space between realizing something in their life no longer fits and understanding why they haven't been able to change it yet. 

In this episode, Leslie explores what happens when awareness doesn't automatically lead to movement, why so many capable women turn their lack of action into evidence against themselves, and the private conclusions they begin drawing about who they are simply because a season has taken longer than they expected. Through reflection and lived experience, s...

Join Leslie Gaudet and Stacy Heisey-Terrell, Career Ownership Coach and HR veteran, for an honest and empowering conversation about what it really takes to stop fitting yourself into a career that was never built for you — and start designing one that actually is. 

After decades in HR across demanding industries, Stacy experienced firsthand the burnout, broken promises, and unexpected disruptions that so many high-achieving women quietly endure. Rather than starting over from scratch, she made a bold, intentional move — and built the balanced, fulfilling work life she once only imagined. Now she helps other women do the same...

Join Leslie Gaudet for a deeply personal conversation about the moments when something in your life keeps asking for your attention, and you can't quite explain why.

In this episode, Leslie explores the frustration of feeling like you're having the same conversation with yourself over and over again. The recurring thought. The recurring feeling. The recurring frustration that continues showing up long before you fully understand what it's trying to tell you.

Drawing from her own experience, Leslie shares how she began recognizing a pattern of clarity, frustration, clarity, frustration—and what happened when she fi...