You know what happens right before you do something new — have a conversation you've never had before, make an offer, raise your price, put something out into the world. Before the thing has even happened, your brain gets to work playing out every version of how it could go: what if they say no, what if they have an objection, what if no one signs up, what if it doesn't go the way I planned.

And it feels productive — like if you could just think through every scenario in advance, you'd walk in prepared for anything. But that's not preparation. That's the what-ifs — and they're one of the sneakiest ways we hold ourselves back from actually doing the thing.

In this episode I'm getting into why we spiral like this anytime we're about to do something that feels new, risky, high-stakes, or vulnerable. As human beings, we want to KNOW — we want to know how it's going to go, we want to be in control of every step, and we've decided that success means things going exactly according to plan... which is just not possible.

This came up recently with my clients inside the Passionate & Prosperous Academy around sales calls — what if they say no to the price, what if they ask for the number before I've even had the real conversation — and it's the same thing that shows up at every phase and stage of business and life, no matter how experienced you are.

What I get into is the difference between the what-ifs you can actually build a contingency plan for and the ones you simply cannot know the answer to until they're happening — and why spending your time and energy trying to figure it all out in advance is so often just a way of avoiding taking the action.

Because the real skill was never having a script for every scenario. It's being anchored in WHY you've made the choices you've made — why you built the offer, why you priced it the way you did, why you do things the way you do — and trusting your skills and your foundation enough to assess, decide, and respond in real time. So much of what we learn in our businesses and our lives comes from DOING the thing — and then going, okay, that happened, here's how I dealt with it, and now I know.

In this episode, we're talking about:

• The what-ifs that show up anytime you're about to do something new, risky, or vulnerable — and why they come up at every phase and stage of business and life
• Why we want so badly to know the outcome in advance and control every step — and why "success = going according to plan" sets us up
• The difference between a what-if you can build a contingency plan for and one you can't know until it's actually happening
• Why spending time and energy trying to account for everything in advance is often just a way of avoiding taking action
• What it means to be anchored in WHY you've made the choices you've made — so you can respond in real time instead of needing a script
• Why so much of what we learn in business and life only comes from doing the thing — and the question to ask when it doesn't go as planned: okay, so now what?

You were never going to be able to plan for all of it — and this episode is about trusting yourself enough to stop trying.

Summer Business School: https://www.staceybrassrussell.com/summer-biz-school

Passionate & Prosperous LIVE!: https://www.staceybrassrussell.com/passionate-prosperous-live-2026

Book a call with Stacey: https://my.timetrade.com/book/DFGVN

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📈 Free Resource: High-Converting Event Playbook

Learn how to create masterclasses, workshops, and talks that actually lead to clients (not crickets).

💻 Free Mini-Course: Your Irresistible Signature 1:1 Offer

Five simple steps to crafting a premium 1:1 offer your ideal clients are ready to say yes to.

🧘 Passionate & Prosperous Manifestation Toolkit ($47)

An exclusive toolkit featuring a 52-card affirmation deck and a guided journal with custom prompts to help you align, manifest, and take intentional action.

Get Full Show Notes, Event Sign Ups and More Information Here:

http://www.staceybrassrussell.com/podcast

We are officially at the halfway point of 2026, and if you started the year with a vision, a word of the year, or a list of declarations about who you wanted to be, this is the moment to pause and take an honest look at how the first six months actually went. And if you're not exactly where you thought you'd be right now, I want you to know that's more than okay.

In this episode I'm doing my own mid-year check-in out loud, including the parts that didn't go according to plan. I made a team hire at the beginning of the year that I thought was going to free me up, and five months in, it didn't work out. I said I was going to write a book this year, and I haven't started it yet. I'm walking through why none of that means I failed, why reassessing at the midpoint isn't the same as giving up on your goals, and the real questions to ask yourself right now: has what you want changed, has your vision shifted, and what clarity have you gained in the last six months that you simply didn't have in January.

I'm also getting into why I believe your business is an ongoing experiment and not a fixed plan you have to white-knuckle your way through, and why being willing to change your mind is a sign of growth, not a sign of failure. I'm sharing what my own next six months look like, including how I'm approaching my launches differently this year and where my focus is going as I head into Passionate & Prosperous Live.

In this episode you'll hear:

• Why not being where you thought you'd be by mid-year is not a fail — and might actually be a sign something better is on its way
• The exact questions to ask yourself to figure out if your goals have genuinely changed, or if you just got knocked off course
• Why "you're allowed to change your mind" applies to your business goals just as much as anything else in your life
• What happened when a team hire didn't go the way I planned — and why I'm not beating myself up about it
• How to recommit to the rest of the year without dragging guilt or self-judgment into it
• Why treating your business as an experiment instead of a rigid plan changes how you handle everything that's still ahead

Wherever you land when you take stock, this episode is your permission to pause, reset, and head into the second half of the year without carrying any regret about the first.

Early bird tickets for Passionate & Prosperous Live are on sale right NOW! This is where we are going to dial up your messaging, make a plan for how you’re going to show up bigger and better so you can get paid for being the amazing coach and expert that you are!

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🌟 Passionate & Prosperous Academy

Join the Academy for coaching, mentorship, and community designed to help you build and grow a transformational business without ads or complicated funnels—just powerful offers, relationships, and live delivery.

📈 Free Resource: High-Converting Event Playbook

Learn how to create masterclasses, workshops, and talks that actually lead to clients (not crickets).

💻 Free Mini-Course: Your Irresistible Signature 1:1 Offer

Five simple steps to crafting a premium 1:1 offer your ideal clients are ready to say yes to.

🧘 Passionate & Prosperous Manifestation Toolkit ($47)

An exclusive toolkit featuring a 52-card affirmation deck and a guided journal with custom prompts to help you align, manifest, and take intentional action.

Get Full Show Notes, Event Sign Ups and More Information Here:

http://www.staceybrassrussell.com/podcast

Being visible is essential in our businesses right now — and if you're in the online business, coaching, or speaking world, you already know that there is a LOT happening in this space around showing up, creating content, talking to camera, and making video. And I am genuinely here for all of it. Showing up matters. Building that muscle matters. But here's what I think is getting lost in the conversation: if you actually want your online presence to DO something for your business, you still need to know what to say. And it's not one perfect post or a template that's suddenly going to explode your business and bring in a flood of clients.

In this episode I'm teaching my messaging strategy and breaking it down into the seven distinct styles and angles that need to be represented across the entirety of your content and body of work. I'm also getting into what messaging really is, how it connects to everything you create, and why everything you put out into the world — from a ten-second reel to a two-day live event — is content. All of it together is your body of work. And understanding that is what actually changes how you show up.

I'm breaking down each of the seven messaging styles, what they do, who they reach, and why no single one of them is enough on its own — because different people in your audience need to hear different things at completely different moments, in completely different ways.

In this episode you'll hear:

• Why visibility and showing up are essential AND why you still need to know what to say — and what that actually looks like in practice
• What messaging really is and how it connects to absolutely everything you create in your business
• Why everything you put out into the world is content — and what your body of work is actually made of
• The seven messaging styles that need to be represented across your content over time — and what each one does for a different person in your audience
• Why different people need to hear the same thing in completely different ways — and why that's not repetition, it's strategy
• Why there is no one perfect post, template, or platform that does the whole job — and what to focus on instead

If you've been showing up and creating content and wondering why it's not quite doing what you want it to do, this episode is going to give you the full picture — and a completely new way to think about everything you say and create.

🔗 Ways to Work With Stacey & Free Resources

💚 1:1 Coaching & Mastermind

Book your free Ultimate Impact Blueprint Session to explore private coaching or mastermind support and take your life and business to the next level.

🌟 Passionate & Prosperous Academy

Join the Academy for coaching, mentorship, and community designed to help you build and grow a transformational business without ads or complicated funnels—just powerful offers, relationships, and live delivery.

📈 Free Resource: High-Converting Event Playbook

Learn how to create masterclasses, workshops, and talks that actually lead to clients (not crickets).

💻 Free Mini-Course: Your Irresistible Signature 1:1 Offer

Five simple steps to crafting a premium 1:1 offer your ideal clients are ready to say yes to.

🧘 Passionate & Prosperous Manifestation Toolkit ($47)

An exclusive toolkit featuring a 52-card affirmation deck and a guided journal with custom prompts to help you align, manifest, and take intentional action.

Get Full Show Notes, Event Sign Ups and More Information Here:

http://www.staceybrassrussell.com/podcast

Something I have been thinking about a lot lately — and talking about with my clients constantly — is this fascinating and costly phenomenon of making “hard” mean “bad”. You are working on something, creating something, trying to find the right words for something that really matters to you, and it feels hard. And the next thing you know you are questioning everything. Whether you are good at this. Whether it is meant for you. Whether everyone else finds this easier than you do. In this episode I am going deep on that — and using the very real, very behind-the-scenes experience of the last few weeks of my own business to do it.

I have been deep in the work of creating the theme and sales page for this year's Passionate & Prosperous Live!, my two-day in-person event in New York City — and it was hard, it took longer than I wanted and I went through it the way I always do when I am creating something big, something important and something that I am putting my whole heart into.

But after decades of being a teacher, a student, a creator and almost 58 years of being human, I have learned a lot about the meaning we make when things are hard - and what we need to do about it.

In this episode I am getting into the many different reasons something can feel hard, and why it is totally not helpful when people try to sell you the idea that if you were in alignment, flow or whatever, your business would feel easy! As always, I’m here to tell you what it really takes to put yourself and your work out into the world - and to let you know that it’s totally okay for it to feel hard sometimes as long as you don’t make it mean all kinds of stuff about yourself.

And in an exciting turn of events, I’m revealing the theme for this year's Passionate & Prosperous Live! — trust me, you are going to want to hear this one — and why every single thing I talk about in this episode is exactly why I landed on it (and why you need to join us this October in NYC!)

Here's what you'll hear in this episode:

• Why hard automatically gets labeled as bad — and why that pattern is costing coaches and business owners more than they realize
• The misinformation the coaching industry keeps selling about ease and alignment — and why it creates false expectations that set you up to struggle
• The two very different reasons something can feel hard — and why knowing the difference changes everything about how you respond
• The real behind-the-scenes of creating Passionate & Prosperous Live 2026 — what the process looked like and what it brought up along the way
• Why you can hold two things at once: knowing your work is extraordinary AND being terrified no one will show up for it
• What real messaging actually is — and why finding the words for your work takes as long as it takes
• Why your voice, your message, your story, and your IP are the one thing you cannot outsource — and what to do when that feels hard
• Why everything takes time — and why how long something takes is never an indictment of you or your abilities

Something being hard does not mean it is bad. It does not mean you are bad at it. It does not mean it is not for you. This episode is going to help you actually believe that.

🎟️ Passionate & Prosperous Live! — October 16 & 17, New York City. Early bird tickets $497 through July 31st. GET YOUR TICKET NOW!

🎓 Summer Business School — three free live workshops July 1, 8 & 15.

REGISTER HERE!

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💚 1:1 Coaching & Mastermind

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🌟 Passionate & Prosperous Academy

Join the Academy for coaching, mentorship, and community designed to help you build and grow a transformational business without ads or complicated funnels—just powerful offers, relationships, and live delivery.

📈 Free Resource: High-Converting Event Playbook

Learn how to create masterclasses, workshops, and talks that actually lead to clients (not crickets).

💻 Free Mini-Course: Your Irresistible Signature 1:1 Offer

Five simple steps to crafting a premium 1:1 offer your ideal clients are ready to say yes to.

🧘 Passionate & Prosperous Manifestation Toolkit ($47)

An exclusive toolkit featuring a 52-card affirmation deck and a guided journal with custom prompts to help you align, manifest, and take intentional action.

Get Full Show Notes, Event Sign Ups and More Information Here:

http://www.staceybrassrussell.com/podcast

If you've ever woken up wanting to create a new client or generate more revenue and found yourself spinning on what you should actually be doing, this episode is for you. I’m going solo and I’m going deep on what I consider to be the number one business strategy for coaches, teachers, experts, and anyone with a human-centered business: personal outreach. It is the fastest path to a client, the foundation of a relationship-driven business, and the strategy that gets the most overlooked and underused by so many business owners - and in this one I’m telling you why.

Showing up in our businesses and for our people takes a lot - it takes time, energy, effort and a whole lot of mindset work to boot. And for most people, the mindset is exactly where it all breaks down. In this episode, I'm going deep on the psychology of both sides: what it takes to be the one doing the outreach, and what it means to be on the receiving end. I'm sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly — including real stories of how I use this strategy in my own business and how to build up the resilience and “thick skin” it takes to keep showing up - even when it’s vulnerable, frustrating and downright disappointing.

Here's what you'll hear in this episode:

• Why personal outreach is the #1 strategy for creating clients — and why so many coaches, experts, and entrepreneurs are overlooking, underusing, or avoiding it altogether
• Who your real warm and hot leads are — and why going to them first is always the right move when you want to create clients now
• What it actually takes mentally and emotionally to implement this strategy with consistency — and why the mindset piece is where most people get stuck
• Why being afraid of coming across as salesy or pushy is keeping you from doing the one thing that would actually work
• The good, the bad, and the ugly of personal outreach — including what to do when it doesn't go the way you hoped
• What to make of the full range of responses you're going to get — and why all of it, including the silence, is useful information for your business
• Why being on the receiving end of outreach matters just as much as being the one who sends it — and what that reveals about where you are in your business

If you keep thinking you need more leads, more visibility, or a better marketing strategy — and you still don't have the clients you want — this episode is going to reframe everything.

And if you want more strategy, mindset and clients join me for Summer Business School July 1, 8 + 15!

I’m hosting a FREE 3-part workshop series so you can keep your biz momentum going while also enjoying your summer!

REGISTER HERE!

🔗 Ways to Work With Stacey & Free Resources

💚 1:1 Coaching & Mastermind

Book your free Ultimate Impact Blueprint Session to explore private coaching or mastermind support and take your life and business to the next level.

🌟 Passionate & Prosperous Academy

Join the Academy for coaching, mentorship, and community designed to help you build and grow a transformational business without ads or complicated funnels—just powerful offers, relationships, and live delivery.

📈 Free Resource: High-Converting Event Playbook

Learn how to create masterclasses, workshops, and talks that actually lead to clients (not crickets).

💻 Free Mini-Course: Your Irresistible Signature 1:1 Offer

Five simple steps to crafting a premium 1:1 offer your ideal clients are ready to say yes to.

🧘 Passionate & Prosperous Manifestation Toolkit ($47)

An exclusive toolkit featuring a 52-card affirmation deck and a guided journal with custom prompts to help you align, manifest, and take intentional action.

Get Full Show Notes, Event Sign Ups and More Information Here:

http://www.staceybrassrussell.com/podcast

If you've ever walked away from a mastermind, a coaching call, or a well-meaning conversation with a colleague feeling more confused than when you started — this episode is going to name something you've probably been living with for a long time. It's not that there's too little advice out there. It's that most of us have never stopped to ask whether the advice we're taking is actually right for us, our business, and where we are right now.

My guest today is Sandra Booker, founder of Sidekick COO and creator of Scale Society, a fractional COO who works with established online service providers to find the single constraint costing them the most time and money — and then designs the systems and team structures to solve it. Sandra is one of the most well-respected operators in the online business world, and this conversation is exactly as good as I knew it would be.

What Sandra and I get into goes way beyond operations and systems. We talk about how to know when you actually need to hire someone versus when you need a better process, the art of pausing before reacting when urgency sets in, and Sandra's concept of "curating your room" — being intentional about whose voices you let influence your decisions, and why the most impressive person in the room isn't always the right one to listen to. Sandra also shares a super cool AI tool that she built and has been using in her own business that I cannot wait for you to hear about — and that I think is going to change how a lot of you are using AI.

In this episode we talk about:

• Why the "self-made" entrepreneur is a myth — and what the business owners who actually build something have in common that nobody talks about
• How to tell the difference between needing a team member, needing a system, or needing to pause and look at what's already in your business
• The real cost of making decisions from fear, urgency, or comparison — and what to do instead
• Sandra's concept of curating your room — why your business bestie might be exactly the wrong person to consult when you have a hard decision to make
• The AI tool Sandra built called “The Advisory Board” — and how you can do the same for yourself
• Why the right move in a revenue dip is almost always to look inside your existing business first — and what to look for
• How to evaluate advice you're hearing — whether it's from a podcast, a mastermind, or someone making big revenue claims online

Your next best business decision is probably not going to come from someone else's strategy. It's going to come from getting clearer on what's actually happening inside your own business — and this episode is going to help you do that!

Design the room your decisions deserve with Sandra's AI Boardroom Blueprint.

🔗 Ways to Work With Stacey & Free Resources

💚 1:1 Coaching & Mastermind

Book your free Ultimate Impact Blueprint Session to explore private coaching or mastermind support and take your life and business to the next level.

🌟 Passionate & Prosperous Academy

Join the Academy for coaching, mentorship, and community designed to help you build and grow a transformational business without ads or complicated funnels—just powerful offers, relationships, and live delivery.

📈 Free Resource: High-Converting Event Playbook

Learn how to create masterclasses, workshops, and talks that actually lead to clients (not crickets).

💻 Free Mini-Course: Your Irresistible Signature 1:1 Offer

Five simple steps to crafting a premium 1:1 offer your ideal clients are ready to say yes to.

🧘 Passionate & Prosperous Manifestation Toolkit ($47)

An exclusive toolkit featuring a 52-card affirmation deck and a guided journal with custom prompts to help you align, manifest, and take intentional action.

Get Full Show Notes, Event Sign Ups and More Information Here:

http://www.staceybrassrussell.com/podcast

Join me for a special episode celebrating 8 years in business! When I realized it was 8 years ago this month that I officially started taking clients as a health and life coach, I thought it would be fun to share 8 lessons I've learned — one for each year.

In my usual "tell it like it is" style, this is a pretty personal, real, and very behind-the-scenes talk about what it really takes to do this. This one is less about strategy and definitely more about what's underneath it all — the showing up, the relationships, the work, and maybe most importantly, how to stay in it for the long haul. I'm sharing stories from my life and my business — not only what I've learned from this coaching business, but from all of my years as a Broadway performer, a yoga teacher, a yoga studio owner, and all the other jobs I had throughout my years making it in New York City.

As I always say, having your own business is not for the faint of heart — but it is absolutely for you if you're willing to do the work. This episode is for every coach, teacher, and service-based business owner who's in it for real.

In this episode you'll hear:

• Why the milestone you just hit is already fading from your memory — and what to do about it
• The reframe that changes everything about how you show up for your business every single day
• What I really mean when I say your business is in a relationship with you — and what it needs from you that you might not be giving it
• Why the people around you matter more than any strategy, tool, or platform you could invest in
• What I've learned about putting yourself out there over and over again — even when it doesn't go the way you planned
• The hardest thing about being in service to other people — and how to keep going anyway
• The one thing you simply cannot get around if you want clients — and how to figure out what it looks like specifically for you

Eight years in this business has taught me that the strategy is the easy part. The real work is everything underneath it — the mindset, the resilience, the relationships, and the willingness to keep showing up even when you don't feel like it. If you're building something of your own, whether you're just starting out or you've been at this for years, I think you're going to find something in this episode that lands for you. This one came straight from the heart.

🔗 Ways to Work With Stacey & Free Resources

💚 1:1 Coaching & Mastermind

Book your free Ultimate Impact Blueprint Session to explore private coaching or mastermind support and take your life and business to the next level.

🌟 Passionate & Prosperous Academy

Join the Academy for coaching, mentorship, and community designed to help you build and grow a transformational business without ads or complicated funnels—just powerful offers, relationships, and live delivery.

📈 Free Resource: High-Converting Event Playbook

Learn how to create masterclasses, workshops, and talks that actually lead to clients (not crickets).

💻 Free Mini-Course: Your Irresistible Signature 1:1 Offer

Five simple steps to crafting a premium 1:1 offer your ideal clients are ready to say yes to.

🧘 Passionate & Prosperous Manifestation Toolkit ($47)

An exclusive toolkit featuring a 52-card affirmation deck and a guided journal with custom prompts to help you align, manifest, and take intentional action.

Get Full Show Notes, Event Sign Ups and More Information Here:

http://www.staceybrassrussell.com/podcast

Coaching episodes are some of my absolute favorites to record — because what happens in them is so fun - real time transformation and shifts that can only come from a great coaching session. In this episode, you get to be a fly on the wall and experience the magic with us!

My guest is Jennifer Watson, a life coach and SoulCollage® facilitator from Rhode Island who came to me after winning a free coaching session as a participation prize at one of my live trainings. She's only recently started coaching in earnest — certified in 2024, officially in practice since August 2025 — and we discovered that she’s actually doing a lot of things right.

She’s showing up, talking to people, getting clients. But she was also feeling stuck in a way she couldn't quite name. She knows she’s a good coach. What she couldn't yet do was articulate what made her her kind of coach — and that gap is showing up everywhere: in her messaging, her content, her lead magnet, and her sense of what to do next.

What we worked through together was less about tactics and more about identity. Jennifer has an entire coaching philosophy underneath her certification — a background in nonprofit fundraising, a nine-year practice as a SoulCollage® facilitator, a deep belief in the power of creative expression to help people access what's true for them — and she wasn't owning any of it. We got into her Yellow Brick Road (the attract-serve-convert framework I use with all my clients), the difference between attracting the right people and nurturing the ones already on your path, and why staying vague in your messaging isn't "keeping your options open" — it's just keeping your ideal clients from finding you.

Reasons to tune in:

• Why being a "good coach" isn't enough to get clients — and the specific thing that actually is
• What it means to own your methodology, and why your tools, background, and approach are the thing people are really hiring you for
• The difference between attracting people and nurturing them — and why confusing the two is the real reason most coaches feel like their marketing isn't working
• How to tell if your lead magnet is pulling in the wrong people at the wrong stage — and what a well-positioned one actually does
• Why staying general in your niche doesn't protect you from losing clients — it just makes you invisible to the right ones
• What Jennifer's early client stories reveal about where coaching clients actually come from (hint: it's not the algorithm)
• The internal shift that has to happen before any of the strategy will land — and why trusting yourself is the business move no one talks about enough

Jennifer left this conversation not with a longer to-do list, but with something clearer and more important: the language to name what she already knows, and the permission to lead with it.

If you've ever felt like you know you're good at what you do but still can't quite find the words to make other people feel it — this conversation is going to show you exactly where you might be leaving your own brilliance on the table.

You can connect with Jennifer here.

🔗 Ways to Work With Stacey & Free Resources

💚 1:1 Coaching & Mastermind

Book your free Ultimate Impact Blueprint Session to explore private coaching or mastermind support and take your life and business to the next level.

🌟 Passionate & Prosperous Academy

Join the Academy for coaching, mentorship, and community designed to help you build and grow a transformational business without ads or complicated funnels—just powerful offers, relationships, and live delivery.

📈 Free Resource: High-Converting Event Playbook

Learn how to create masterclasses, workshops, and talks that actually lead to clients (not crickets).

💻 Free Mini-Course: Your Irresistible Signature 1:1 Offer

Five simple steps to crafting a premium 1:1 offer your ideal clients are ready to say yes to.

🧘 Passionate & Prosperous Manifestation Toolkit ($47)

An exclusive toolkit featuring a 52-card affirmation deck and a guided journal with custom prompts to help you align, manifest, and take intentional action.

Get Full Show Notes, Event Sign Ups and More Information Here:

http://www.staceybrassrussell.com/podcast

Showing up is not something that just happens. It's not a personality trait some people have and others don't. It's a muscle — and like any muscle, it has to be trained, worked, and maintained. Not just when you're in crisis, not just when the deadline is breathing down your neck, but every single day, whether things feel easy or hard, whether you're feeling inspired or completely over it.

I've been watching this play out in real time with my own clients lately — people who are smart, talented, and deeply committed to their work, and who still find themselves backing out at the last minute, going dark when things get hard, or waiting until they feel ready before they take the next step. And what I keep coming back to is this: the inner work, the nervous system awareness, the mindset shifts, the healing — all of it is real and all of it matters. But none of it does anything without the muscle that makes you actually show up and do the thing.

In this episode I'm getting into what I'm calling the show up muscle — what it is, why it's non-negotiable, and what it actually takes to build it. I'm talking about the daily practices that create resilience before you need it, the difference between knowing you should do something and actually doing it, and why at a certain point, healing is a choice. There's also something I want to say about compare and despair, about the "show must go on" mentality that I grew up with, and about why confidence is not something you think your way into — it's something you build by doing the thing you're most afraid to do.

Reasons to tune in:

• Why showing up is a muscle — and why you have to build it before you need it, not just when everything feels like it's falling apart
• The difference between doing the inner work and actually moving forward — and how endless healing work can become its own form of staying stuck
• Why confidence isn't something you build by thinking about doing the thing — it's built by actually doing it, even when it feels terrible
• What the "show must go on" mentality really means for coaches, creatives, and service-based business owners
• Why the best time to build your practices is when everything is going well — and what my husband, the psychoanalyst, has to say about that
• How to tell the difference between something genuinely dangerous and something your nervous system just wants you to avoid
• Why compare and despair is something you manage, not something you cure — and what that management actually looks like in real life
• The kinds of support only you can give yourself — and the kinds that require other people around you

Life is hard. And there is always something you can do about it. This episode is about building the muscle that makes that true.

Want to discover some of the incredible coaches and experts in the Passionate & Prosperous community? Check out the Passionate & Prosperous Client Showcase at staceybrassrussell.com/the-passionate-prosperous-showcase.

🔗 Ways to Work With Stacey & Free Resources

💚 1:1 Coaching & Mastermind

Book your free Ultimate Impact Blueprint Session to explore private coaching or mastermind support and take your life and business to the next level.

🌟 Passionate & Prosperous Academy

Join the Academy for coaching, mentorship, and community designed to help you build and grow a transformational business without ads or complicated funnels—just powerful offers, relationships, and live delivery.

📈 Free Resource: High-Converting Event Playbook

Learn how to create masterclasses, workshops, and talks that actually lead to clients (not crickets).

💻 Free Mini-Course: Your Irresistible Signature 1:1 Offer

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🧘 Passionate & Prosperous Manifestation Toolkit ($47)

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If you've ever talked yourself out of being visible — pulled back from an opportunity, avoided putting something out there, or kept waiting until you felt more ready — you’re going to love this episode.

I’m joined by Anna Holtzman, a licensed therapist, coach, and host of the podcast How to Trust Yourself, who works with accomplished women ready to express their voice with clarity and integrity and lead from the inside out. Anna's background spans TV, publishing, and years of nervous system-informed practice that grew out of her own experience with burnout and chronic pain — and what she and I get into in this conversation is something that doesn't get talked about enough in the business world: the nervous system's role in everything we do.

What we explore together is why the most sensitive, most gifted people — the coaches, the healers, the creatives — are often the ones most afraid to be seen. It's not because they don't have something important to say — it's because the very openness that makes them extraordinary at their work is the same thing that makes visibility feel genuinely threatening at a biological level.

But what makes this conversation extra juicy is how much Anna and I have in common — she brings the therapeutic lens and I bring my yoga perspective — but we both have a deep connection to the somatic, nervous system and inner work that we both love. Together we get to have the kind of conversation that goes beneath the surface of business strategy and into the real, tangible reasons why fear has such profound consequences for how visible you're willing to be, how you talk about your work, and ultimately how much of an impact you make.

In this episode we talk about:

• Why coaches, healers, and creatives are wired for deep vulnerability in their work — and why that same wiring makes visibility feel so much more threatening than it does for others
• The nervous system explanation for why you talk yourself out of putting your work into the world, and why pushing through it without addressing what's underneath rarely works long-term
• Anna's dialoguing with fear method — and what it actually sounds like to treat your fear like a trusted friend instead of a problem to eliminate
• The "readiness" myth: what's really happening when you keep moving the goalpost on when you'll finally feel ready to be seen
• Why the moment things start working can feel just as destabilizing as when they're hard — and what that tells you about how your nervous system is wired
• How graded exposure — small, nervous-system-friendly steps forward — creates lasting change without the boomerang effect of going too big too fast
• The role of co-regulation and community in making any of this possible, and why they aren't soft extras — they're the actual mechanism through which transformation happens

You don't have to get rid of your fear to be visible. You never will. But you can learn to move with it — and this episode is going to show you how!

Connect with Anna on Instagram and get her free workshop, "Be Seen", for sensitive entrepreneurs & creatives who want to be seen and heard—without losing themselves.

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Five simple steps to crafting a premium 1:1 offer your ideal clients are ready to say yes to.

🧘 Passionate & Prosperous Manifestation Toolkit ($47)

An exclusive toolkit featuring a 52-card affirmation deck and a guided journal with custom prompts to help you align, manifest, and take intentional action.

Get Full Show Notes, Event Sign Ups and More Information Here:

http://www.staceybrassrussell.com/podcast