What if being the woman everyone can count on is actually keeping you from the life you want? In episode two of my Lessons from Times Square series, we’re talking about the invisible roles ambitious women take on at home and at work, and what it costs when being capable turns into carrying everything.

I’m challenging the belief that being a great mom, partner, or leader means making everyone else’s life run smoothly at the expense of your own. Because your exhaustion is not proof of how much you love your family, and being indispensable is not the same as being valuable. This episode is your invitation to stop automatically stepping in, fixing, remembering, and carrying, so you can put yourself back inside the big life you’re working so hard to build.

In This Episode, You Will Learn

• How to create more space for your career, relationships, health, and the dreams that belong to you.

• The hidden cost of becoming the person everyone depends on to keep life moving.

• Where being highly capable may actually be creating more work and responsibility for you.

• How to be a deeply involved mother without making exhaustion the price of admission.

• What your kids learn when they see you build a full, happy life of your own.

• The difference between being valuable and making yourself indispensable.

• Where your desire to help may be keeping the people around you from becoming more capable.

• How to recognize when you’ve quietly become the safety net at home or at work.

• What changes when you stop treating every problem you notice as yours to solve.

• How doing less for the people you love can create more room for connection, leadership, and your own life.

• The question that can reveal how much of everyone else’s life is currently running through you.

• What we’re tackling next in Lessons from Times Square, including approval, “good girl” conditioning, and building a life without needing everyone else to approve it.

Resources + Links

Ready to make more, work less, and design a life you love? Go to shaylaking.com and join the waitlist to be the first to know when there are openings to work with me through 1:1 coaching or the Performance and Happiness Lab.

Watch on YouTube HERE!

Find more resources on our website shaylaking.com

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Shayla on LinkedIn: @shaylamking

Shayla on Instagram: @shayla_king_executive_coach

What would you allow yourself to want if you knew you couldn’t fail? In the first episode of my Lessons from Times Square series, I’m challenging the belief that ambitious women have to choose between extraordinary success and a life they actually enjoy. You don’t need to want less. You need to get honest about what you actually want and stop confusing “having it all” with doing it all for everyone else.

I’m sharing why putting myself on a billboard in Times Square was about so much more than visibility, the beliefs I had to unlearn after building a successful life that felt terrible to live, and what may actually be standing between you and the next level you know you’re capable of. This is your permission to want the promotion, the money, the health, the family, the time, the fun, or the ridiculously big dream you’ve been negotiating down before you even give yourself a chance to go after it.

In This Episode, You Will Learn

• The difference between “having it all” and the exhausting version ambitious women have been taught to pursue

• What my Times Square billboard taught me about owning a dream before knowing how to make it happen

• The hidden responsibilities successful women carry that were never actually part of the life they wanted

• The belief about success I had to unlearn after reaching the C-suite and realizing something still wasn’t working

• The question that reveals where you may be negotiating your own life down

• What changes when you stop giving other people voting rights in your biggest decisions

• The reason capability alone may no longer be enough to get you to your next level

• What the people doing extraordinary things understand about what’s available to them

• The uncomfortable desires that may be pointing directly toward your next chapter

• The 25-things exercise to uncover what you actually want before worrying about how you’ll get it

• What we’re tackling next in Lessons from Times Square, including visibility, approval, capacity, and resourcing yourself for a big life

Resources + Links

Ready to make more, work less, and design a life you love? Go to shaylaking.com and join the waitlist to be the first to know when there are openings to work with me through 1:1 coaching or the Performance and Happiness Lab.

Watch on YouTube HERE!

Find more resources on our website shaylaking.com

Follow

Shayla on LinkedIn: @shaylamking

Shayla on Instagram: @shayla_king_executive_coach

You know you’re capable of more. So what’s actually keeping you from your next level? After conversations with high-performing women across Corporate America, I kept hearing the same patterns again and again. Brilliant, accomplished women are overworked, underutilized, overlooked, exhausted, or staying in careers they’ve already outgrown.

In this episode, I’m breaking down five of the biggest patterns I see holding ambitious women back and what to do differently. We’re talking about knowing when you’ve outgrown a role, protecting your energy from workplace nonsense, rebuilding a life that actually gives something back to you, and the “tragedy of the high performer” that can keep your hard work from translating into your next promotion. If you have that itch that you’re meant for something bigger, this episode is your reminder to stop waiting for someone else to notice what you’re capable of and start positioning yourself for what’s next.

In This Episode, You Will Learn

• How to know when it’s time to change your positioning inside your company or take your talent somewhere else

• What to do when you’re so tired that even the thought of fixing your life feels overwhelming

• The one question to ask yourself when you can’t remember the last time you had real energy

• How to start taking back your calendar when everything feels equally urgent

• The “tragedy of the high performer” that can quietly stall your career

• What senior leaders actually need to know about you before they see you at the next level

• The difference between being known as someone who gets things done and someone who can lead at the next level

Resources + Links

Ready to clear your plate, take back your time, and get focused on what actually matters? Join the waitlist for The Executive Reset

Watch on YouTube HERE!

Find more resources on our website shaylaking.com

Follow

Shayla on LinkedIn: @shaylamking

Shayla on Instagram: @shayla_king_executive_coach

What if getting everything you want in your career didn’t require sacrificing everything you love about your life? In this episode, I sit down with my client Rowsha LaBranche-Thompson, a corporate development executive, wife, and mom of two, who found herself on the path to partnership while working 70+ hour weeks and realizing she had nothing left to give.

Rowsha shares what happened when she stopped following the career path she thought she should want and started asking what she actually wanted instead. We talk about building a career around your real priorities, making extraordinary money without accepting miserable conditions, letting go of the pressure to do everything yourself, and creating a life where your ambition, family, health, and happiness no longer have to compete. If you’ve ever wondered whether wanting more success and more life is asking for too much, this conversation is for you.

In This Episode, You Will Learn

• The career “trade-off” high-achieving women have been taught to accept

• The question successful women are afraid to ask that you should be asking (it changes everything)

• The surprising truth about making great money and having boundaries

• The sign that the career path you worked so hard for might not be the one you actually want (and what to do about it)

• The success metric that could be pushing you toward burnout instead of your best life

• What becomes possible when you stop believing you have to “do it all”

• The non-negotiables every ambitious woman should define before making her next career move

• How to create more time for your family without shrinking your professional goals

• The belief about high-paying jobs that could be keeping you trapped in a career you’ve outgrown

• What opens up when you stop living by everyone else’s definition of success

• The permission ambitious women need to want more from their careers and their lives

• Why the next level of your career might look completely different than you expected

Resources + Links

Want the promotion, the pay, AND the freedom to enjoy your life? Join the Happiness + Performance Lab NOW! Doors close September 2nd.

Watch on YouTube HERE!

Find more resources on our website shaylaking.com

Follow

Shayla on LinkedIn: @shaylamking

Shayla on Instagram: @shayla_king_executive_coach

Follow LaBranch Family Foundation on LinkedIn

You are the asset. So why are you the only thing in your life nobody's maintaining?

In part two of the Promotion + Happiness Method, Shayla King closes out the three-shift system with Shift 3: Protect the Asset. This is the episode for the woman doing two full-time jobs in one 24-hour day and calling her exhaustion a personal failure. It isn't.

What you'll learn:

• Why buying back your time is good economics, not extravagance
• The real math behind the dual-career household, and why what you're carrying has never been done before at this scale
• How to buy back time through money or through community, whichever lever is actually available to you
• Why sleep, movement, and regulation are performance strategy, not self-care
• How Shayla builds 10 epic, non-negotiable adventures into her year, on purpose

Performance and happiness are not opposites. You can have the career and the life. Both.

Catch up on part one if you missed it, then hit play here.

Register for the FREE Promotion + Happiness Method Live Masterclass at ⁠shaylaking.com/2026-promotion-playbook. ⁠

The Performance + Happiness Lab is open for enrollment now at ⁠shaylaking.com/phlab.⁠

Book your decision call ⁠here⁠.

Work like you don't have kids. Parent like you don't have a job. Today, we're burning that playbook.

In this episode, Shayla King teaches the first two shifts of her Performance + Happiness Method, the framework built for senior female leaders who refuse to choose between the promotion and the life.

• Why your exhaustion is a design flaw, not a personal failure
• The one-page exercise to find what you're carrying that nobody actually assigned
• Why regulation, not hustle, is the promotion skill nobody put in your job description
• Three real scenes for staying powerful under pressure, from the meeting where someone talks over you to the 3am spiral that won't let you sleep
• How to press stop on the doom loop and choose where your brain goes next

Do the one-page exercise. Circle your three. Then come back next week for Shift Three: Protect the Asset.

Register for the FREE Promotion + Happiness Method Live Masterclass at shaylaking.com/2026-promotion-playbook.

The Performance + Happiness Lab is open for enrollment now at shaylaking.com/phlab.

Book your decision call here.

I didn't lose 35 pounds by finding the perfect diet. I lost it by deciding who I was first.

In this episode, executive coach Shayla King shares her actual health and wellness routine, the one behind her transformation from "hot mess mom" to strong, fit, and calm while leading a high-powered career.

Here's what she covers:

• Why identity work has to come before any workout or eating plan for it to stick
• How she built a consistent workout habit while relearning to walk after her coma
• Her simple, high-protein food philosophy (dessert included)
• The micro-breaks she uses to reset her energy between meetings and calls
• Why managing her inner dialogue changed her life more than anything else on this list
• What's actually in her green water, morning and afternoon

What's In My Green Water:

Every morning before the gym, Shayla mixes creatine, Perfect Aminos, and Amino Energy in green apple. The creatine and Perfect Aminos support muscle. The Amino Energy is her pre-workout, that's where the caffeine lives. In the afternoon, she repeats the creatine and Perfect Aminos, minus the caffeine. In addition to building muscle, new studies have shown that creatine is great for brain support. Shayla use it twice a day and it keeps her mentally sharp in the afternoon.

→ Perfect Aminos (BodyHealth): https://www.bodyhealthaffiliates.com/72HLHTR/3QQG7/
→ Creatine Monohydrate (Naked Nutrition): https://nakednutrition.com/products/creatine-monohydrate-powder
→ Amino Energy, Green Apple (Optimum Nutrition): https://www.optimumnutrition.com/en-us/products/essential-amino-energy-pre-workout-powder

Some links above are affiliate links, which means Shayla may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

This is not a diet episode. It's a design episode. Performance and happiness are not opposites, and neither are ambition and health.

Ready to build your own plan? Join the Performance + Happiness Lab at shaylaking.com/phlab

"The world loves a suffering woman." A line that opens one of the deepest episodes yet.

Part two with Krista Williams (author, speaker, host of Almost 30) goes deep. Real deep.

What we get into:

• Why the world doesn't always know what to do with a happy, thriving, confident woman, and the "suffer to deserve it" programming behind it
• Why success makes men more likable and women less likable at work, and how to catch yourself doing it to other women
• Moving from volume-based friendships to depth, and why outgrowing people is part of growth, not a red flag about you
• Setting a boundary with a parent, and why "family" doesn't mean you don't get a choice
• Krista's story about her dad, a Jaguar, a smashed mailbox, and the kind of love that becomes a generational gem

If you've ever felt smaller for being confident or unsure what to do with a friendship that no longer fits, hit play.

Join the Performance + Happiness Lab: shaylaking.com/phlab
More from Shayla: shaylaking.com
More from Krista Williams: itskrista.com | Almost 30: almost30.com

You don't have to want it to be hard. You're just allowed to want it to be easy.

This week Shayla King gets personal. The survival identity she built as a kid. The moment on a college tour with her daughter that hit her sideways. And the concept currently rewriting her life: the separation of tasks. What's actually yours to carry, and what was never yours to begin with.

What you'll take away:

• Why over-functioning feels like personality but is usually just old wiring
• The difference between helping from steadiness and helping from guilt
• A real coaching example: 3 options for supporting aging parents without resentment
• Why "I have to" is almost never actually true
• Permission to want ease, not just earn rest after you've proven enough

Performance and happiness are not opposites. You can be excellent and rested.

Ready to go deeper?

The Performance + Happiness Lab is enrolling now for our September cohort: shaylaking.com/phlab

#TheFiveClubPodcast #WomenInLeadership #ExecutiveCoaching #Overfunctioning

It's not the most talented person in the room who gets promoted. It's the easiest person to work with.

This week Shayla breaks down three leadership lessons from a year of contractor chaos (a pool guy, a countertop crew, and a whole lot of missed windows) to teach the executive presence skill most leaders never name.

• Communicate in the format the other person actually needs, not the one that's easiest for you
• If people can't get real access or real answers from you, they'll quietly go find someone who gives it to them
• Do what you say you're going to do, exactly when you said it, not eventually
• Why this pattern is the hidden reason smart women get stuck in middle management
• Ease of doing business with you is a trainable, promotable skill, not a personality trait

Capable. Credible. Easy.

That's the combination that gets you trusted with more.

Ready to build this into your leadership? shaylaking.com/phlab