Congruent with Lisa Carpenter | The truth beneath success. Why it never feels like enough.

By Lisa CarpenterBusiness Entrepreneurship Health & Fitness Mental Health Education Self-Improvement

Congruent with Lisa Carpenter | The truth beneath success. Why it never feels like enough. episodes

October 21You Built the Life You Wanted. Why Does the Bar Keep Moving? with Amber Lilyestrom
Does your success feel the way you thought it would?
Lisa Carpenter asks Amber Lilyestrom that question after more than a decade of watching her build the life she once described out loud: a home on the water, more time together than apart, and work that means something. Amber's answer is yes, and what makes this conversation worth your time is how honestly she tells you what that yes required. It's a conversation about the cost of high achievement, and about what becomes possible when you stop moving the bar.
Who is Amber Lilyestrom?
Amber Lilyestrom is a business mentor, four-time author, and the creator of the Money Codes Method. She hosts Homeward, the Sovereign Business Podcast, writes the Homeward Substack, and has published books including Paddle Home and Little Big Beautiful Things (2025). A Division I athlete who earned a college scholarship, Amber launched her business in 2014 and has spent the years since on one idea, helping people come home to who they really are, now through intimate one-to-one work with her clients.
Amber's story: the life she described in 2014 and what it asked of her
When Amber started her business in 2014, her daughter was nine months old and her vision was already specific: a home on the water, more time together than apart, and room to write, speak, and help people. The picture was older than the business, because at nine she wanted to live on a lake and wake up to a loon. Along the way came 500-person sold-out events, six figures sold from stage, and books, and she describes them as adventures and chances to meet new versions of herself rather than the point.
She learned what she did and didn't want by standing in the rooms. Amber went to masterminds, hosted retreats in LA, and spent time in person with well-known people so she could be her own judge instead of taking anyone's word for it. Her parents had modeled a quieter measure, and her mom used to tell her the cool kids in school were just peaking. Still, the online-business ruler was loud, and her mentor Rosemary Braden kept asking where the ruler came from while Amber wondered whether a seven-figure year was what she wanted at all.
The ruler had a second source. Amber's training as an athlete, where there is never a final personal record because there is always a new one, followed her into business, and her body eventually began setting limits she had spent decades overriding. After hip trouble, a dislocating kneecap with multiple surgeries, and a concussion, she paused soccer this fall, the first fall off of her entire life, at 45. Lisa knows the territory from her own side: a reckoning with her identity as an athlete that began in 2023, and a season where she no longer wants to do one more rep.
Today Amber describes a business that is boring and rich at the same time: three days a week, from about 10 to 3, with clients she knows intimately, then walks, cooking for her family, and a hobby with her daughter showing purebred Himalayan and Persian cats. Ambition is no longer a word she feels any resonance with. What she protects is time and attention, and she is open about the grief that comes with that, including the creative space her four-year-old son's arrival took up.
What we talk about in this episode
Why fame never appealed to Amber, and what she wanted instead. She wanted a home on the water, her people close, and room to write and speak, a picture she has carried since she was nine.
How you learn what success means by standing in the rooms. Amber and Lisa both describe watching the gap between what people said on stage and what they saw behind the scenes, and what each decided they didn't want.
The question of the ruler. Amber's mentor kept asking where her metric stick came from, and Amber traces it to years of performing for playing time and comparing herself online.
Why an athlete never gets a personal record that lasts. There is always a new one, and Amber and Lisa talk about what it means to keep moving the bar and ask, to what end?
What it costs to be trained to have no limits. Amber's first fall off from soccer at 45 and Lisa's decision to stop doing one more rep are two versions of the same decision to start listening to the body.
Right-sized success and the case for a boring business. Right size might mean multiple seven figures for one person and $5,000 months with three clients for another, and Amber says one is not better than the other.
Why ambition and striving stopped fitting. Amber no longer feels any resonance with the word, and she explains what she is doing in this season instead.
What she protects now: time and attention. Raising a four-year-old and a thirteen-year-old, with parents in their seventies and eighties, Amber calls time the one thing you don't get back.
How gratitude and grief can sit in the same chest. Multiple things can be true at once, and Amber names what she grieved when her son arrived.
A poem to close the conversation. Amber reads "All Right," the final poem in her 2025 book Little Big Beautiful Things.
This episode is for you if:
You described the life you wanted years ago, you're living it now, and you want to know what to do with that.
You've been measuring your success against a ruler you never chose.
You hit the goal and move the bar before it has a chance to land.
You trained, competed, or worked like an athlete, and your body has started setting limits you used to override.
You've wondered whether the next level is something you want or something everyone around you says you should want.
You're thinking about making your business smaller on purpose and aren't sure that's allowed.
You're grateful for your life and grieving something in it at the same time.
The thing you protect most has changed, and your calendar hasn't caught up.
What is your ruler measuring?
Amber's answer to the question this podcast asks is yes, and she got there by noticing where her ruler came from and choosing a different one. Most people who have built something real never get that far, because the bar moves quietly and the next goal arrives before the last one has landed.
Staying in that loop costs you the things you were building toward: time with your people, a body that carries you well, and the quiet you once described wanting. There is nothing wrong with your ambition. It's worth knowing what is doing the measuring, and what it costs you to keep moving the bar.
Ready to see what your ruler is really measuring?
The Success Paradox Assessment will show you exactly which pattern has been driving the way you measure success, and what it's costing you to keep running it. Take it at lisacarpenter.ca/assessment.
If you're ready to work through this directly, you can apply to work with Lisa at lisacarpenter.ca/wwm.
Connect with Amber Lilyestrom
Website: amberlilyestrom.com
Instagram: @amberlilyestrom
Podcast: Homeward, the Sovereign Business Podcast
Substack: Homeward
Books: Paddle Home and Little Big Beautiful Things, on Amazon
Success that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside. That's the conversation

If you listen on Spotify:
1. Open the Spotify app on your phone.
2. Search for Lisa Carpenter and open her podcast page.
3. Tap the three dots under the podcast description.
4. Choose Rate show from the menu.
5. Select your star rating and tap Submit.
55 min
October 14Internally Anchored Leadership with Charlie McCarron (Part 2)
You can see the pattern clearly and still run it. Awareness is where the change starts, but it isn’t what changes your life. What changes it is stepping into a new way of being, a new identity that the old pattern no longer fits, and then repeating the new actions until they’re simply who you are. So what does internally anchored leadership actually look like on an ordinary Friday afternoon?
In part two of this conversation, Charlie McCarron walks through exactly that.
Who Is Charlie McCarron?
Charlie McCarron is co-principal of a real estate business in Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia. He started in real estate at forty with no experience, after years in the mining industry, and reached the top three percent of his company nationally inside two years. He is now a business owner leading a growing team, and the host of the podcast Talk to Me With Charlie.
From Saying Yes to Everyone to Making Decisions From His Values
Charlie describes the pattern in one sentence: saying yes to things you don’t want to do, because you don’t want to disappoint someone, puts your self-worth in other people’s hands. By the time the date arrived, he’d be thinking, I really don’t want to do this. When Lisa asked what had changed most about how he makes decisions, his answer was one word: space. A window between the invitation and the answer, and a real choice inside it.
He tells the story of a close friend’s weekend event that he kept committing to and pulling out of, and of telling that friend in the third year not to count on him. When the friend turned up for lunch instead, the relief was the lesson. “That’s the space.” He also describes the exercise of setting his values, where he first wrote down the ones he thought other people expected of him. His real highest value turned out to be time on his own, and the guilt around admitting it was significant.
The same shift shows up in how he leads. He told his business partners from the start that he wanted to be an owner, and acted like one long before he was. When they told him early on that he could be abrasive, he asked them to tell him what to change. Lisa’s distinction is that abrasive is direct without space, and direct with space is responsive. When one of his agents said he wanted to beat him, Charlie told him: you can’t beat me, because I actually want you to win.
What success looks like now is smaller and more concrete than the metrics he once chased. It’s handing his phone to someone else at lunchtime on a Friday, going to Pilates, and having a steak lunch with a good mate before picking his kid up from school. The bigger measure is whether the people around him say he changed something for them. He’s not the finished product: his fortnightly breakfast with his wife is the intention, and he’ll tell you he missed last week. The trip to Ireland with his family hasn’t happened yet, but it’s now a choice rather than a pipe dream.
What We Talk About In This Episode
Space as the biggest shift in how he decides. The window between an invitation and his answer, and why yes out of fear of disappointing someone hands your self-worth to them.
The weekend event he kept pulling out of. What the relief at lunch with his friend taught him about choosing where he spends his time.
Setting values he thought others expected. What happened when he wrote down his real ones, why his highest is time on his own, and the guilt that came with admitting it.
Acting like an owner before he was one. Making decisions from the level he wanted to reach, and what it meant to be told he was abrasive.
From reactive to responsive. Being direct without being abrasive, and listening to understand rather than to respond.
“I want you to win.” What he told the agent who said he wanted to beat him, and why the leaderboard that matters is where each person was last year.
The “you just timed the market” objection. Why his results weren’t luck, giving himself credit, and how hard it still is to accept praise.
The freedom he once thought was years away. Taking his family to Ireland for weeks, and why it went from a pipe dream to a choice.
Good on paper versus extraordinary. What it was like to have a job that looked ideal and still not be happy, and why his ambition grew rather than shrank.
Handing on less to his kids. Growing up in a family shaped by 1950s Ireland and scarcity, the fortnightly breakfast with his wife, and the moment she told him he’d taken the family so far in such a short time.
This Episode Is For You If
You can name your pattern and still catch yourself running it.
You say yes to things you don’t want to do because you don’t want to disappoint anyone.
You’ve set values you think you should have, rather than the ones you actually hold.
You’re leading a team and want the people around you to win more than you want to be ahead.
You’ve been told your success was luck or good timing, and part of you believes it.
You find it hard to accept praise, especially from people you love.
You know the life you want and keep treating it as years away.
Your ambition is intact, and you want to know what it looks like inside a more intentional life.
What Does Living the Shift Actually Take?
Charlie’s story in part two isn’t about a single decision. It’s about repetition: the new actions, the reps, the small moments of choosing differently when the old pattern pulls hard. Awareness got him to the starting line. Taking his phone off on a Friday, saying no to an invitation, and sitting with his real values took practice, and he’ll tell you he’s still practicing.
It’s also not a story about slowing down. Charlie’s ambition didn’t shrink. It grew, and it became more intentional. He wasn’t asked to give up wanting more. He was asked to build it on something that could hold it.
Missed part 1? You can listen HERE
Ready to Move From Seeing the Pattern to Living Differently?
Applications to work with Lisa privately are open. If you’re ready to work through this directly, you can apply at lisacarpenter.ca/wwm.
Not sure yet? The Success Paradox Assessment will show you which pattern has been driving how you lead and decide, and what it’s costing you to keep running it. Take it at lisacarpenter.ca/assessment.
Connect With Charlie McCarron
Podcast Website: https://www.talktomewithcharlie.com/
Instagram:
Personal: @charliemccarron
Real Estate: @charlie.raywhite
Podcast: @talktomewithcharlie
LinkedIn: Charlie McCarron
Success that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.

If you listen on Spotify:
1. Open the Spotify app on your phone.
2. Search for Lisa Carpenter and open her podcast page.
3. Tap the three dots under the podcast description.
4. Choose Rate show from the menu.
5. Select your star rating and tap Submit.
50 min
October 07Is This All There Is? Chasing a Goal That Never Landed with Charlie McCarron (Part 1)
You've built something that looks, from the outside, like proof you made it. The income, the reputation, the results everyone can see. So why does it still leave you asking: is this all there is?
That's exactly where Charlie McCarron found himself. Within two years of starting in real estate with zero experience, he hit the metric he'd been chasing for the better part of a year, a result that put him in the top three percent of his company, across Australia. And when he finally crossed the line, the feeling wasn't pride. It was: is that it?
Who Is Charlie McCarron?
Charlie McCarron is co-principal of a real estate business in Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia. He started in real estate at forty with no prior experience, after years working in the mining industry, and inside two years built his individual results into the top three percent of his company nationally. Today he leads a growing team as a business owner rather than an individual producer, and recently launched his own podcast, Talk to Me With Charlie.
From "You Won't Outwork Me" to Learning He Couldn't Outwork His Own Identity
Charlie grew up on a farm in rural Northern Ireland, where hard work was gospel: the harder you worked, the more you'd be rewarded. He carried that into a long career in the mining industry, then into real estate at forty, where it hardened into a mission. If another agent worked twelve hours, Charlie worked fourteen. If they made a hundred calls, he made a hundred and ten. When he interviewed for the sales role, he told his future business partners: you won't outwork me. He meant it, and for a while, it worked.
It got him into the top three percent of his company nationally, inside two years, starting from zero. But the milestone he'd been chasing for the better part of a year didn't land the way he expected. He calls it "the empty destination happiness," the feeling when you finally tick over the line you've been running toward and think: is that it? He also couldn't rest. Being told to block off a Friday lunch hour for Pilates felt, in his own words, impossible: that's a work day. Even his family time wasn't fully his; what he calls "fake rest," a weekend away where he was still checking on deals from his phone, still braced for the call he might miss.
The turning point wasn't one moment so much as a string of uncomfortable ones: realizing that not everyone on his team wanted to run at his pace, and that expecting them to was quietly capping how big the business could get. Making decisions from the level he wanted to reach, not the one he was standing on. And underneath all of it, a scarcity story about money that went back to backpacking around Australia broke, watching an ATM count out cash he wasn't sure was actually there. When it came time to invest in coaching, his wife asked what the guaranteed return would be, and he didn't have an answer, only a conviction that he had to do it. Rather than pull the money from their joint account without being able to promise anything back, he sold half his own, fairly modest, share portfolio, some of it at a loss, and funded it himself.
Charlie's still not "the finished product," his own words. He still gets cranky, still has disagreements with his wife. What's changed is how fast he catches himself, and how fast he repairs it. That shift, from reactive to aware, is where we leave things at the end of this episode. Part two is where it actually gets tested.
What We Talk About In This Episode
The "you won't outwork me" mentality that took him from zero real estate experience to the top three percent of his company in under two years, and what it cost him to sustain it.
Where that identity came from. Growing up on a farm in rural Northern Ireland, and the story that hard work is what separates you from everyone else.
The empty feeling of finally hitting the goal he'd been chasing for the better part of a year, and why "is that it" is more common than people admit.
Why one lunch hour for Pilates felt genuinely threatening, and the lack mentality behind "what if I miss the call."
"Fake rest" and what it cost his family. Being physically present on a weekend away while still mentally running the business.
Charlie's own coal-miner analogy for narrow-focus leadership, and what it took to actually step back and see the bigger picture.
The moment his hard-work identity stopped working for him. "You'll never outwork the identity you hold."
Letting go of the expectation that his whole team run at his pace, and why holding onto that expectation was quietly capping the business.
His money story, from broke backpacker anxiety at the ATM to selling half his share portfolio to invest in coaching without a guaranteed return.
Learning to catch himself faster. The shift from reacting to noticing, and repairing a moment quicker than he used to.
This Episode Is For You If
You've hit a goal you worked years for and felt strangely nothing when you got there.
You measure your worth by how much more you can do than the person next to you.
You've built real success and still don't fully trust that it's real, or that it'll last.
Taking an hour for yourself in the middle of a workday feels borderline irresponsible.
You're leading people who don't work the way you do, and it's driving you a little crazy.
You know your identity is running the show, but you're not sure how to change it.
You grew up with a scarcity story about money that still shows up in how you spend, save, or invest today.
You've said you were "away" with your family while quietly checking your phone the whole time.
What Is Your Hard-Work Identity Actually Costing You?
Charlie's story isn't really about real estate. It's about what happens when the identity that built your early success becomes the ceiling on everything after it. The instinct that got you here rarely knows how to stop once you're here, and the cost shows up quietly: in the rest you can't take, the family time you're not fully present for, the money you've made but don't quite trust yourself to hold.
The pattern is learnable, which means it's also unlearnable. Charlie didn't fix it by working harder. He fixed it by getting honest about what the hard work was actually protecting him from feeling.
Ready to See What Your Hard-Work Identity Is Actually Costing You?
The Success Paradox Assessment will show you exactly which pattern has been driving your need to outwork everyone in the room, and what it's costing you to keep running it. Take it at lisacarpenter.ca/assessment.
If you're ready to work through this directly, you can apply to work with Lisa at lisacarpenter.ca/wwm.
Connect With Charlie McCarron
Podcast Website: https://www.talktomewithcharlie.com/
Instagram:
Personal: @charliemccarron
Real Estate: @charlie.raywhite
Podcast: @talktomewithcharlie
LinkedIn: Charlie McCarron
Does your success feel the way you thought it would?

If you listen on Spotify:
1. Open the Spotify app on your phone.
2. Search for Lisa Carpenter and open her podcast page.
3. Tap the three dots under the podcast description.
4. Choose Rate show from the menu.
5. Select your star rating and tap Submit.
47 min
September 30Identity Tied to Achievement: Redefining Leadership with Michelle Sutter
For years, Michelle Sutter measured success the way a lot of high achievers do: by her title, her comp plan, and how many people were on her team. She built that career without a single mentor to show her the way, and one boss's offhand comment, that no one could outwork him, turned into a personal mission she still catches herself running today. Then a conversation with a group of teenage girls in one of Nairobi's largest slums asked her a question none of that experience had prepared her to answer. This is a conversation about identity tied to achievement, and what happens when it finally gets examined.
Who is Michelle Sutter?
Michelle Sutter is the CEO of One Girl Can, founder of the Opening Doors Foundation, and an executive coach with more than two decades of global leadership experience spanning corporate, nonprofit, and high growth organizations. Her work is guided by a mission to open doors of opportunity so others can step into their full potential.
Michelle's Story: From Outworking a Boss to Opening Doors
Michelle's career started with a walk along the seawall with a girlfriend, weighing a job at a boarding school in Switzerland against a cruise ship job that had just come through. She took the ship job, and it put her to work as an onboard translator among people from 65 different countries, then, against her own objections, in onboard sales, where she became the top performer without ever thinking of herself as someone who was "selling." When she moved into her first leadership role, she had no training, no guidance, and no mentor. She built her sense of what good leadership looked like by watching what bad leadership cost the people around her.
Along the way, an early boss told her no one could outwork him. She made it her mission to prove him wrong, and won. It's a pattern she can still spot in herself today: impatience with anything that won't move at her pace, and a hypervigilance she describes as being permanently on high alert, particularly around conflict she can't advocate her way out of for herself, even though she'll go to bat for anyone else without hesitation.
The turning point came on a trip to Kenya, where Michelle traveled to watch the first girl she'd sponsored through university graduate, after four years of exchanging letters. Before the graduation, she visited a school in Kibera and met the students there. Nearly every one of them asked her some version of the same two questions: why do you care, and why do we matter. Michelle left that day changed, and when she learned the founder of One Girl Can was planning to retire and wind the organization down, she made the decision to take it over almost overnight.
Today, Michelle says this work doesn't feel like a job. She's still in the middle of unwinding old coping habits, but she's clear on what she's no longer willing to trade for achievement: her peace.
What we talk about in this episode
Being handed leadership with zero training. Michelle's first leadership role came with no mentor and no roadmap, and she built her own definition of good leadership by watching what didn't work around her.
The "no one can outwork me" challenge. One offhand comment from an early boss became a personal mission, and it still shows up today as the impatience she has to watch for in herself.
What she believes great leadership actually requires. Culture, psychological safety, and being willing to give someone an opportunity even when it means losing them from your team.
The trip to Kenya that reframed everything. Watching a young woman she'd sponsored for four years cross the graduation stage, after a childhood that included sleeping on the street.
The two questions she couldn't stop hearing. Why do you care, and why do we matter, asked by student after student at a school in Kibera.
How fast the decision to take over One Girl Can actually came. Once Michelle understood what was at stake, it wasn't a long deliberation.
Impatience, hypervigilance, and the conflict she won't have on her own behalf. Michelle is candid about standing up for others easily and struggling to do the same for herself.
Choosing solitude over just being alone. Michelle draws a clear distinction between the two, and what disconnecting from technology, spending time in nature, journaling, meditating, and midnight swims did for her sense of peace.
Redefining success as impact instead of title. Why Michelle now measures success by the doors she opens for other people rather than her comp plan or her team size.
The one thing she won't sacrifice anymore. Her peace, and what it actually took to start protecting it.
This episode is for you if:
You've built your career on being the one who can always do more, and you're not entirely sure how to stop.
You were handed a leadership role without training or a mentor, and had to figure out what good leadership looked like on your own.
You suspect the patterns that built your success might be the same ones quietly costing you your peace.
You've had one moment, a trip, a conversation, a question you couldn't answer, that reframed everything you thought success meant.
You can advocate for anyone else without hesitation but go quiet when it's time to do it for yourself.
You're doing the slow work of unwinding coping habits that used to keep you safe and now just take more from you than they give.
You've wondered what it would take to feel as much peace on the inside as your life looks like from the outside.
What Pattern Is Running Your Success?
Michelle's story is a reminder that the habits that build a career, proving you can outwork the doubt in the room, saying yes before you've thought it through, refusing to be the one who falls behind, don't disappear once you've made it. They just get quieter, and harder to see.
If this conversation landed, the next step is understanding which pattern is actually running your success right now.
The Success Paradox Assessment will show you exactly which pattern has been driving the way you achieve and lead, and what it's costing you to keep running it. Take it at lisacarpenter.ca/assessment.
Lisa works with a limited number of clients privately. You can apply at lisacarpenter.ca/wwm.
Connect with Michelle Sutter
Website: onegirlcan.com | michellesuttercoaching.com
Instagram: @michellesuttercoaching
LinkedIn: @michellesuttercoaching
Success is a feeling, not a destination.

If you listen on Spotify:
1. Open the Spotify app on your phone.
2. Search for Lisa Carpenter and open her podcast page.
3. Tap the three dots under the podcast description.
4. Choose Rate show from the menu.
5. Select your star rating and tap Submit.
53 min
September 23Success Doesn't Feel Like Success: Miranda Lievers on Redefining It.
Success doesn't feel like success. Even when you've built something that changed hundreds of millions of lives.
That's the gap sitting underneath this conversation with Miranda Lievers, co-founder of Thinkific, one of Canada's most successful technology companies. Miranda took the company public, and still woke up the day after ringing the bell feeling empty despite everything she'd built, standing in what she describes as an empty ballroom with no idea what came next.
Who is Miranda Lievers?
Miranda Lievers is the co-founder of Thinkific, an online course platform that went public in 2021. After stepping away from the company's day-to-day, she took what was supposed to be a six-month sabbatical that turned into two and a half years, a period that included a late autism diagnosis and a complete rebuild of how she defines success, connects to her own body, and decides what's worth her time. She's now writing a book to change the language around what it actually takes to scale a business, and she works with entrepreneurs at torchtheplaybooks.com.
Miranda Lievers's Story: When Success Doesn't Feel Like Success
Before Thinkific existed, Miranda's definition of success was simple: pick up whatever was handed to her and march toward it. Good grades led to the right job, which led to the next promotion, which led to the next box to check. She never questioned whether the goalposts were even hers to chase.
For years, building the company meant staying heads down, occasionally looking up long enough to notice it was working, then getting back to it. There wasn't time to feel any of it, and the feeling never arrived the way she expected. The cost showed up quietly at first, then all at once, on the day Thinkific rang the opening bell. Instead of the moment she'd been working toward for years, Miranda described waking up the next morning like she was standing in an empty ballroom the day after the biggest event of her life, with no calendar, no plan, and no idea where to go.
She stayed another three years before stepping away from the day to day entirely, and that's where the real shift started. Miranda gave herself six months with one rule: no new company, no board seats, nothing to fill the calendar. Somewhere in the middle of building a spreadsheet to analyze every project she'd ever loved or hated, she found a thread she couldn't explain, followed it, and discovered she is autistic. What was supposed to be six months became two and a half years of unlearning almost everything she thought was true about how she worked, what she needed, and who she actually was underneath the version of herself everyone else had come to expect.
Today, Miranda describes her goal in a phrase she liked so much she tattooed it on her arm: she wants to build a future so meaningful that everything before this moment becomes merely a footnote in her biography. Not because Thinkific didn't matter. Because she's no longer building for anyone else's definition of what matters next.
What we talk about in this episode:
Why success doesn't feel like success, even after the milestone everyone told you would fix it. Miranda walks through what it actually felt like to ring the opening bell, and why the moment everyone else was celebrating left her feeling completely ungrounded.
The difference between stepping back and stepping away. How Miranda knew it was time to leave the company she built, and why loving your work doesn't mean it's still the right place for you.
What a late autism diagnosis reveals about a lifetime of masking. Miranda unpacks the small, tactical ways she'd been solving problems, like working at 5am or avoiding music with lyrics, without ever understanding what she was actually solving for.
Feeling empty despite accomplishment, and what was actually underneath it. For years, Miranda attributed every emotion to hunger. She talks about what changed when she finally started sitting with what she felt instead of intellectualizing her way around it.
"The identity crisis is the price of admission for the next version of us." Why the grief of letting go of an old identity isn't a sign something's wrong, it's the cost of becoming who's next.
Redefining success as a moving target you get to set yourself. Miranda on why she no longer needs to check boxes for anyone else, and what she's building instead.
Why she's writing a book to change how entrepreneurs think about scaling. The gap between the corporate playbooks everyone hands you and what actually helps a business grow.
This episode is for you if you've ever:
Hit the milestone you'd been working toward for years and felt strangely empty on the other side of it
Kept moving the goalposts because "enough" never actually felt like enough
Been the person everyone assumed had it together while quietly wondering what you were even building toward
Solved a problem in your life for years without understanding what the real problem actually was
Realized you could describe your feelings in words but couldn't actually locate them in your body
Built a life, a career, or a company that impresses everyone else and still left you asking what's next
Sensed you'd outgrown the rules you were following, without knowing you were even allowed to question them
Why Doesn't Success Feel Like Success Once You've Already Made It?
Miranda's story lands because it names something a lot of high achievers won't say out loud: reaching the milestone doesn't automatically deliver the feeling you assumed would come with it. You can build something that changes hundreds of millions of lives and still wake up the next day without a sense of who you are underneath the achievement. That gap between what you've built and what you feel isn't a flaw in your effort. It's usually a sign you've been running toward someone else's definition of success the entire time.
Ready to see the pattern you're running?
If any part of Miranda's story felt familiar, the checking boxes, the milestone that didn't land the way you expected, the sense that you've outgrown a version of success you used to want, that recognition is worth paying attention to. The Success Paradox Assessment will show you exactly which pattern has been driving your version of the gap between what you've built and how it actually feels, and what it's costing you to keep running it. Take it at lisacarpenter.ca/assessment.
If you're ready to go deeper and work through this directly, you can apply to work with Lisa at lisacarpenter.ca/wwm.
Connect with Miranda Lievers
Website: torchtheplaybooks.com
Instagram: Miranda Lievers
LinkedIn: Miranda Lievers
Success is a feeling, not a destination. Miranda's story is proof that you get to keep redefining it, no matter how much you've already built.

If you listen on Spotify:
1. Open the Spotify app on your phone.
2. Search for Lisa Carpenter and open her podcast page.
3. Tap the three dots under the podcast description.
4. Choose Rate show from the menu.
5. Select your star rating and tap Submit.
51 min
September 16When You Prove Them Wrong and Success Still Doesn't Feel Like Success with Esther Blum
What happens when you finally prove everyone wrong, and it still doesn't feel like enough?
That's the question at the center of this conversation with Esther Blum, and it's one a lot of high achievers never let themselves ask out loud. You can win the argument. You can build the thing they said you couldn't. And you can still wake up wondering why it doesn't feel like the win you thought it would be.
Who is Esther Blum?
Esther Blum is an integrative dietitian, menopause expert, and host of The Midlife Realignment podcast. She's the author of five bestselling books, including See Ya Later, Ovulator, and she recently gave a TEDx talk called The Prescription Pad of Misogyny, on how medicine fails women in menopause. Esther runs a gaslight-free private practice and serves as an HHS Ambassador, advocating for equity and empowerment for midlife women.
Esther Blum's Story: She Proved Him Wrong, So Why Wasn't It Enough
Esther came from a family of doctors. Her grandfather was a surgeon who practiced medicine into his nineties, her father was a chemist pushed into medical school by that same grandfather, and when Esther chose dietetics over medicine, her grandfather told her, to her face, that she'd never be a success and never make any money. Her response was two words: watch me.
She spent the next several decades doing exactly that. She built a private practice from nothing, filled it with a full roster of celebrity clients, and became one of the most recognized names in her field. On the outside, it looked like proof. On the inside, she was running on a perfectionism that never let her stop, always looking ahead to the next thing instead of letting herself feel what she'd already built.
The turning point came when life stopped giving her a choice. She lost both of her parents. She needed a hysterectomy. And over about seven months, her entire team, including the assistant who'd been with her the longest, walked away. It forced her to finally sit with something she'd been outrunning for most of her adult life: how much trauma, both the big kind and the quiet everyday kind, had actually been driving her all along.
That's when she got real support, went through a plant medicine journey, and started the work of learning to trust herself instead of outsourcing her decisions to everyone else. Today, she's rebuilt her business around fewer people, more calm, and a definition of success that has nothing to do with proving anything to anyone.
What we talk about in this episode:
The moment that started it all. Esther's grandfather told her she'd never be a success the day she chose her own path, and how that one sentence quietly built the foundation of her entire career.
The Prover and the Polisher archetypes. How these patterns can run your life for decades without you ever naming them, and why success built on proving yourself rarely feels like success once you get there.
The cost of never stopping to feel it. What it actually costs your body and your relationships when you're always looking ahead to the next accomplishment instead of letting yourself land in the one you just had.
The breaking point that forced a reckoning. How losing both her parents, needing major surgery, and watching her team walk away in the same stretch of months finally made avoidance impossible.
Naming the trauma underneath the achievement. Why Esther finally got support to unravel what had been quietly driving her, and what it looks like to stop carrying it alone.
The plant medicine journey that changed everything. What actually happened, and why it became the turning point for learning to trust herself again.
Rebuilding smaller, calmer, and more herself. Why Esther restructured her entire team and business around peace instead of hustle, and what came in once she did.
A new definition of success. Esther's own mantra, the more fun I have and the more playful I am, the more money I make and the more my business grows, and what it means to build a life and a business around that instead of around proving.
This episode is for you if you've ever:
Built something impressive to prove someone wrong, and never let yourself actually enjoy having won
Felt successful on the outside while quietly crumbling on the inside
Known you should slow down and take care of yourself but always ran out of time and energy
Kept moving to the next accomplishment before you let yourself feel the last one
Put your work in front of the people and things that mattered most to you
Carried trauma you never named because you were too busy being the strong one
Wondered how much longer you could keep proving yourself before something had to give
Built a life people admire, but it doesn't feel congruent on the inside
How to stop proving and start feeling successful
Esther's story isn't really about plant medicine or a dramatic seven months. It's about what happens when the patterns that build your success are the same patterns that keep you from ever feeling it. If you've spent years proving your worth through what you produce, what you achieve, or what you can point to, you already know that the proving never actually stops. There's always another person to convince, another milestone that was supposed to finally make it enough.
The cost of staying in that pattern isn't just exhaustion. It's the version of your life where you're everyone's rock, admired from the outside, and quietly disconnected from the success you worked so hard to build.
Ready to stop proving and start feeling like yourself again?
If Esther's story hit something in you, the first step isn't a big commitment, it's getting honest about which pattern is actually running your life. That's exactly what the Success Paradox Assessment is built to do. In a few minutes, you'll see whether you're operating as the Machine, the Prover, the Polisher, or the Giver, and why that pattern has been quietly shaping how you work, lead, and measure your own worth.
Take the assessment at lisacarpenter.ca/quiz.
Once you've done that, if you want to go deeper, head to lisacarpenter.ca and fill out an application to work with me. That's where we look at the exact gap between the success you've built on the outside and what you're actually feeling on the inside, and what it's going to take to close it.
Connect with Esther Blum
Website: estherblum.com
Instagram: @gorgeousesther
Podcast: The Midlife Realignment
Connect with Lisa Carpenter
Instagram: @lisacarpenterinc
Success Paradox Assessment: lisacarpenter.ca/quiz
Success that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.

If you listen on Spotify:
1. Open the Spotify app on your phone.
2. Search for Lisa Carpenter and open her podcast page.
3. Tap the three dots under the podcast description.
4. Choose Rate show from the menu.
5. Select your star rating and tap Submit.
48 min
September 09The Hidden Cost of Success: What Are You Afraid Will Happen If You Put It Down?
The Hidden Cost of Success: What Are You Afraid Will Happen If You Put It Down?
You can hit every goal you set for yourself and still feel a very specific kind of dread the second someone suggests you stop. That's the hidden cost of success nobody warns you about: not the exhaustion, but the fear of what stopping might say about who you are. In this solo episode, Lisa turns the question she asks every guest back on herself: does this still feel the way you thought it would? She answers it by telling you exactly what happened when she quietly paused Congruent for a season, and what she was terrified would happen if she did.
What Happened When Lisa Pressed Pause
Before last summer, Lisa hit a point where recording episodes, seeing clients, and staying on the road stopped fitting together. Nothing was falling apart. Things were just getting heavy, and heavy is the word she keeps coming back to in this episode, because heavy doesn't mean wrong. It means pay attention.
A friend, client, and colleague was the one who said it plainly: stop. Build up an episode bank over the summer instead of scrambling weekly, and let herself get ahead without the pressure of a deadline attached to every conversation. The decision to listen was simple. What came after wasn't. A flood of questions showed up almost immediately: what does it mean about me if I stop? Will people think I'm flaky? Is this quitting? What if everyone forgets the show?
Lisa maps those questions straight onto the four Success Paradox archetypes and catches each one in real time: the machine insisting something bad happens the second you stop producing, the prover treating a pause as proof you were never good enough, the polisher deciding anything less than perfect weekly output isn't good enough, and the giver terrified of disappointing an audience it feels responsible for. None of that was really about the podcast. It was the identity built on top of it.
So she paused it anyway. And the result was nothing. Downloads dropped, understandably, since there was nothing new to download. Everything else, the client work, the business, the actual quality of her life, kept moving. She got her summer back, gathered interviews and case studies without pressure, and came back to record this episode from desire instead of obligation, which is the whole point.
What we talk about in this episode:
The four Success Paradox archetypes and how each one panics about stopping. The machine, the prover, the polisher, and the giver each tell a different story about what pausing means, and Lisa catches all four running in real time.
Why self-integrity is harder to keep than integrity with other people. Most of us break promises to ourselves far more easily than we'd ever break one to someone else, and Lisa unpacks what it means to stay integral to your own values first.
The difference between a commitment that's heavy and one that's simply hard. Heavy means something needs to change. Hard just means it matters. Lisa walks through how she tells the two apart in her own life.
Four questions to ask before you keep any commitment running. Is this still taking me where I want to go? What is it costing me energetically? Would I choose to begin this today if I weren't already doing it? Am I committed to the outcome or one particular way of getting there?
What actually happened when Lisa stopped producing weekly episodes. Not the fear. The real, measurable result, and why it was so much smaller than the story she'd built around it.
Why high standards need reviewing, not lowering. Lisa reframes "lowering the bar" into asking what excellence realistically looks like for this specific season of your life.
The real questions to ask about what's started to feel heavy. What are you doing simply because you've always done it? What are you afraid would happen if you put it down? Who would you be disappointing, and are you trying to prevent that?
Why pausing something is not the same as quitting it. Lisa makes the case for changing your mind as evidence of self-integrity, not the absence of it.
This episode is for you if:
You've built something real and you're still afraid of what it means about you if you stop doing it the way you always have.
You keep every commitment you make to other people and quietly break the ones you make to yourself.
Something in your life has started to feel heavy, and you're not sure if that means it's wrong or just that it matters.
You've set standards for yourself you never actually chose, and you've never gone back to ask if they still fit.
You're worried that changing your mind or slowing down will make you look inconsistent, flaky, or unreliable.
You know the difference between high achievement and high performance, and you're not sure which one you've been running on.
You're the person everyone expects to hear from on schedule, and the idea of going quiet feels like letting people down.
You've wondered what would happen if you just put something down for thirty days and gave yourself the space to find out.
What Are You Carrying Right Now Because You're Afraid to Put It Down?
Lisa isn't telling you to quit anything. She's asking you to go back and actually look at what you're still carrying out of habit, obligation, or fear of what people will think, rather than because it still serves what you actually want.
That review is exactly what the Success Paradox Assessment is built to start. It identifies which archetype, the machine, the prover, the polisher, or the giver, is running your current pattern around commitment and consistency, and what that pattern is quietly costing you to keep it running unexamined.
The Success Paradox Assessment will show you exactly which pattern has been driving your relationship to commitment, consistency, and stopping, and what it's costing you to keep running it. Take it at lisacarpenter.ca/assessment.
If you're ready to work through this directly, Lisa works with a handful of private advisory clients by application only lisacarpenter.ca/wwm

If you listen on Spotify:
1. Open the Spotify app on your phone.
2. Search for Lisa Carpenter and open her podcast page.
3. Tap the three dots under the podcast description.
4. Choose Rate show from the menu.
5. Select your star rating and tap Submit.
47 min
July 02ENCORE: Why Giving Doesn't Make You Great
In this episode, Lisa revisits one of the earliest episodes of the podcast, originally titled "Why Giving Doesn't Make You Great," with a new introduction recorded after a conversation with a friend and former client at a conference in Calgary. That conversation centered on the children's book Rainbow Fish, in which a fish gives away each of his sparkly scales in order to be liked and accepted by the other fish.
Lisa connects this to the messages many women receive growing up: don't be too much, don't shine too brightly, but also don't shrink too far. She traces this back to core human needs for love, safety, and belonging, and invites listeners to examine where they learned that standing out put those needs at risk, and what parts of themselves they may have given away as a result.
The original episode explores the theme of martyrdom and over-giving, using the children's book The Giving Tree as a central metaphor. Lisa unpacks how the tree gives away everything she has, her apples, her branches, her trunk, until she is left as a stump, and is still described as "happy." She connects this pattern to the belief that self-worth is tied to how much of yourself you can give away, and to the guilt and discomfort that surface when women begin prioritizing their own needs.
A central story in the episode comes from a member of a coaching community Lisa is part of (through Jim Fortin's program), a woman named Kirsten who shared a personal realization after listening to an earlier episode of the podcast. Kirsten described coming from generations of self-sacrificing mothers and believing that giving all her love away, without keeping any for herself, was what love required. After an argument, her husband told her he might come to resent her if she didn't start taking care of herself, a moment Kirsten described as earth-shattering.
Lisa uses this story to introduce the idea that giving everything away isn't rooted in love, but in a belief in scarcity, and contrasts the metaphor of love as a finite pie with love as an unlimited, continuously flowing fountain.
Lisa closes the episode by encouraging listeners to take an honest inventory of where they are over-giving, and to recognize that prioritizing their own wellbeing is not selfish, but a necessary condition for sustainable impact in their relationships, families, and work.
Resources mentioned:
The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein
Rainbow Fish, by Marcus Pfister
Jim Fortin's coaching community
Apply to work with Lisa 1:1: lisacarpenter.ca/wwm
If you listen on Spotify:
Open the Spotify app on your phone.
Search for Lisa Carpenter and open her podcast page.
Tap the three dots under the podcast description.
Choose Rate show from the menu.
Select your star rating and tap Submit.
34 min
June 25ENCORE Real Love Doesn't Ask You To Disappear
We've been sold a story about unconditional love that sounds beautiful on the surface and quietly costs us everything underneath. Stay no matter what. Forgive everything. Hold it together. Don't make it about you.
In this episode, I'm unpacking what unconditional love actually means, where it belongs, and where it doesn't. Because love and relationships are not the same thing, and confusing them is one of the most common ways that deeply loving, deeply generous people end up completely losing themselves.
This conversation came out of a recent client call and kept coming up as I dug deeper with others. So many people right now are reevaluating love after infidelity, divorce, or simply waking up one day and realizing they've been so devoted to the relationship they forgot to stay devoted to themselves.
What we cover in this episode:
What unconditional love actually means and the one relationship where it genuinely belongs
Why acceptance is not the same as tolerance, and how confusing them keeps you stuck in dynamics that drain you
The difference between loving someone's humanity and having conditions on how the relationship functions
How "I'll stay no matter what" stops being devotion and starts being self-abandonment
What healthy, mature love actually looks like in practice, including reciprocity, boundaries, accountability, and room for individual growth
The self-love piece most people miss entirely, and why it has nothing to do with bubble baths or mantras
Reflection prompts to help you get honest about where you are in your relationships right now
This one is personal. I share openly about my own relationship, what I've learned walking through some significant challenges with my partner, and what became possible on the other side when we both showed up for the repair.
If you've been calling tolerance love, if you've been shrinking yourself to keep the peace, or if you've been so focused on loving everyone else that you stopped including yourself in that equation, this episode is for you.
Reflection prompts from this episode: Where are you mistaking tolerance for love? Where are you overextending yourself and calling it love? Do you only love yourself when you're performing? What does emotional safety actually look like for you? Can you love someone's humanity and still say no to their behavior? Can you love yourself while being honest and compassionate with yourself about your own patterns?
Resources mentioned: Brené Brown's work on shame and the definition of shame as the intensely painful belief that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging
Work with Lisa: If this episode stirred something up, it might be time for a check-in. You can apply to work with me directly at lisacarpenter.ca/wwm.
Connect with Lisa:
Website: lisacarpenter.ca
Podcast: lisacarpenter.ca/podcast
Instagram: @lisacarpenterInc
No pressure. Just possibility.
If you listen on Spotify:
Open the Spotify app on your phone.
Search for Lisa Carpenter and open her podcast page.
Tap the three dots under the podcast description.
Choose Rate show from the menu.
Select your star rating and tap Submit.
36 min
June 17The Cost of Hiding in the Rooms Where It Matters Most: Leadership, Identity, and Learning to Lead from Presence with Julie Averill
What does it actually cost you to hide yourself in the rooms where it matters most?
Not the obvious things. Not the opportunities you can point to or the relationships you can name. The subtler cost. The version of yourself that never quite got to show up at grad school, in the boardroom, at the table where it counted. The years of spending your best mental energy managing how you were perceived instead of actually being there. That's the cost most high-capacity leaders don't talk about, and it's exactly what Julie Averill is willing to put on the table.
Who is Julie Averill?
Julie Averill is a technology executive, leadership advisor, and the author of Chief Impact Officer, a book about why psychological safety, influence, and culture matter more than authority and control. She served as global CIO of lululemon, where she helped scale the company from two to over ten billion dollars, and has led technology at some of the most recognized brands in the world. She works with companies navigating the intersection of human leadership and the AI era through her advisory practice, Goldthread. Her book, Chief Impact Officer, launches June 16th, 2025.
Julie Averill's Story: The Cost of Leading from Behind Walls
For most of her corporate career, Julie Averill was exactly who you'd want leading a transformation. Strategic, capable, and able to move companies through massive change. But underneath the results and the credibility and the seat at the table, she was operating with significant parts of herself carefully out of view. She was hiding, not from the work, but from being fully known in the rooms where she was doing it.
For years, Julie minimized her relationship with her wife Cindy, keeping her presence out of professional contexts, navigating a life that required her to show up as a partial version of herself. At the time, it felt like the only reasonable way to operate. What she didn't fully see was the cumulative cost. The relationships she didn't build at grad school because she wasn't all the way in. The leadership impact she left on the table because the energy she should have been directing toward her team was going toward managing perception instead. The people on her team who might have felt permission to be more fully themselves, if she had been.
The shift didn't come from a framework or a leadership course. A mentor asked her one direct question: how was her team supposed to follow her if they didn't know who she was? It landed differently than she expected. She thought she'd been hiding the hiding. She hadn't been.
What followed was a reckoning, a coach with difficult questions, and a slow process of learning what it actually meant to lead from presence rather than proof. Then came the trip to Ethiopia to bring home her son Airmas, who was six years old and had no reason to trust these strangers who'd arrived to take him across the world. Every instinct Julie had, her drive to fix, to connect, to prove she was the right person for this, failed her completely. It was a stranger singing the Bingo song on a street, and two Ethiopian businessmen in a coffee shop who finally reached him. All Julie had to do was get out of the way. She stood there, heart breaking a little, and let it happen.
That moment didn't just change how she understood adoption. It changed how she understood control, connection, and what leadership actually requires when the stakes are real.
What we cover in this episode:
How success can arrive exactly as planned and still not feel the way you expected. Julie reflects on reaching what many would call a pinnacle at lululemon, and the quiet recognition, not of ingratitude, but of misalignment: that she was there for comfort and a paycheck, not because the work ahead was the work she needed to do.
The invisible tax of hiding yourself in professional environments. When you spend your processing power managing how you're being perceived rather than contributing what you actually think, you leave your own potential on the table. Julie names this with uncommon precision, including what it cost her at grad school, in her marriage, and in her leadership.
Why identity fusion with leadership is such a specific trap for high-capacity people. The skills that make someone great at leading others, being needed, being capable, being the one who holds things together, are often the exact skills they refuse to apply to themselves. Julie and Lisa go deep on what self-leadership actually looks like when you're wired to lead everyone else first.
The mentor question that changed everything. One direct observation from someone who knew her well: nobody on her team knew who she really was. What that question revealed about the walls she'd built, and what it took to start coming out from behind them.
The coffee shop in Ethiopia and what it taught her about control. This is the story at the heart of this episode. Julie arrived in Addis Ababa wanting to be the right mother for her six-year-old son. She couldn't speak his language, couldn't make him trust her, couldn't will the connection into being. Two strangers at a coffee shop did what she couldn't. What she learned in that moment about surrendering control without abandoning responsibility is something no leadership book had prepared her for.
What over-functioning actually costs women in leadership. The pattern of doing more, carrying more, proving more, is socially rewarded right up until the point it isn't. Julie and Lisa talk honestly about how this wiring shows up, what it feels like when you're inside it, and why naming it as self-inflicted doesn't make it easier to stop.
The qualities that will become more valuable, not less, as AI reshapes work. Judgment. Passion. Curiosity. The ability to connect with human beings. Julie has spent significant time working at the intersection of organizational change and AI adoption, and her perspective on where the real competitive advantage lies is worth paying attention to.
What psychological safety actually requires from the leader. You can't create it externally if you don't have it internally. Julie is direct about this. If you're not operating from a place of honesty yourself, your team knows, and no amount of stated values or culture investment closes that gap.
What Julie has become unavailable for, and how that clarity has shaped her first year as an entrepreneur. After years of corporate life, she's learning, in real time, that freedom and over-commitment are not mutually exclusive. The work of saying no to herself has turned out to be harder than saying no to anyone else.
This episode is for you if:
You've achieved something significant and you're starting to notice the gap between how it looks from the outside and how it actually feels from the inside.
You've spent years being excellent in rooms where you weren't fully yourself, and you're only now starting to count what that cost you.
You pride yourself on your leadership but would privately admit that you don't extend that same standard of care to yourself.
You've reached a level of success that required you to be the capable one, the strong one, the one who held it together, and you're tired of that being the whole story.
You know what it feels like to grip something so tightly in an effort to control the outcome that the very thing you wanted slipped through anyway.
You're moving into a new chapter, whether that's entrepreneurship, a new leadership role, or simply a different relationship with how you succeed, and you sense that what got you here isn't quite what will serve you next.
You've wondered what it would feel like to actually lead from who you are rather than from who you need to prove yourself to be.
What leading from presence actually requires
There's a version of leadership that looks like strength from the outside and costs everything on the inside. It's the version built on walls, on carefully managed perception, on channeling every ounce of capability toward the work while keeping the person doing the work just out of view. It works. For a long time, for most people, it works.
What Julie's story makes clear is that the cost of that way of operating doesn't always announce itself. It accumulates quietly, in the relationships that stayed surface-level, in the rooms you were only partially present for, in the version of yourself that kept getting left at the door. And at some point the gap between what you're projecting and what you're actually carrying becomes its own kind of exhaustion.
The shift Julie describes isn't about becoming more vulnerable or softer or less ambitious. It's about understanding that real leadership presence, the kind that actually moves people, actually creates safety, actually earns trust, requires you to be a person first. Not a role. Not a result. A person.
That's the work this conversation points toward. And it's the same question underneath everything I work on with my clients: not how do you achieve more, but what are the patterns you're running to maintain what you've already built, and what are those patterns costing you?
Ready to understand what's running underneath your success?
If this conversation landed for you, a useful place to start is understanding which pattern is most active in how you lead and achieve. The Success Paradox Quiz takes about five minutes and identifies the specific archetype shaping how you succeed, what it's costing you, and what becomes possible when you start leading from a more intentional place. Take the quiz at lisacarpenter.ca/quiz.
And if you haven't already, grab Julie's book. Chief Impact Officer is out June 16th and available wherever books are sold, including Amazon. Chief Impact Officer https://goldthreadllc.com/book
Connect with Julie Averill: goldthreadllc.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julie_averill_/
Connect with Lisa Instagram: @lisacarpenterinc
Take the Success Paradox Quiz: lisacarpenter.ca/quiz
The question isn't whether you've achieved success. It's whether your success feels the way you thought it would.
1 hr