This one's a live masterclass, recorded with a room full of gorgeous humans asking me absolutely anything they wanted. We pulled a tarot card, did a meditation, and then got into the real stuff: money fear, pricing, creativity, and what happens to your whole life when you stop making things.

If you're a creative human building a business and you've hit that weird squeamish feeling about earning more, this is for you. Also for you if you're booked out with one-to-one clients and can't see how to get out, or if your art has fallen to the bottom of your to do list.

Topics covered:

⭐️ The money fear that hit when my business approached $150K a year

⭐️ Why I put prices on the website instead of hiding them behind a discovery call

⭐️ Moving from one-to-one work into group programs, courses + get-it-done days

⭐️ The nightly gratitude practice that actually shifts your nervous system

⭐️ Being visible, making public mistakes, and changing your mind in front of everyone

⭐️ What my kids do when they can tell I haven't had creative time

⭐️ Energy work + letter-burning for releasing a relationship that's dragging

Key insights

💓 Money fear usually isn't about money. Mine was about becoming the wealthiest person in my family, which felt as unnatural as outliving my eldest brother

💓 Draw the version of you who earns the number that scares you. Who is she, what does she wear, what does she do with it

💓 Hiding your price loses you the enormous chunk of your audience who will never book a discovery call

💓 If you're fully booked, that's a pricing signal, not a scheduling problem

💓 You don't need to preemptively nail a new offer. Run it as an experiment and learn what you like

💓 Gratitude works because it softens the body, and a softened body can see possibilities again

💓 Nobody on earth is liked by everybody. Pretzeling yourself into the right shape for each person is not available as a strategy

💓 Creative time isn't a reward for finishing the work. It's the thing that makes the work possible

Notable quotes

"What a beautiful gift it is that a woman gets to become the wealthiest person in her family of origin."

"I am an explorer of life, and I'm going to make the best decision I can in the moment I'm in."

"If I don't create, if I don't fill my world with delicious things, my business suffers. My soul suffers. My family gets a cranky sad mum."

Leonie Dawson is a multi award-winning entrepreneur who has created over $16 million in revenue in part-time hours. She is the founder of the Unicorn Biz & Life Academy which helps over 3,000 people build unique, joyful & abundant businesses. https://www.leoniedawson.com

Links + resources mentioned

Take Action Club - enrol now for half price -- https://www.leoniedawson.com/action

Unicorn Biz & Life Academy, $99 for the year, 100+ programs including Money Manifesting & Multiple Streams Of Income -- https://www.leoniedawson.com/academy

The Lightseer's Tarot by Chris-Anne

Biddy Tarot, founded by Brigit Esselmont

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

Hiro Boga, my mentor for over a decade (now retired)

#womeninbusiness #NeurodivergentEntrepreneur #CreativeBusiness #MoneyMindset #ADHDBusiness #SoulfulBusiness #TarotReading #SmallBusinessAustralia

Leonie's recording from outside, and there's a reason. Operation De-SADify is underway after a week of crying at random, including weeping twice in one day about Cathy Freeman winning gold in 2000. Tam has found the Slavic shamanic teacher she's been hunting for years and is running a literary festival. We're both reading fabulous books that we want to tell you about. Also: the autistic Olympics. Census night, baby.

WHO THIS IS FOR

If you're a neurodivergent creative running a business while also holding kids, ageing parents and your own wobbly nervous system through the last month of winter, this one's for you. Especially if you can't tell whether you need a strategy or just more sunshine and a nap. Two women talking honestly about widening to hold it all.

TOPICS COVERED

• Seasonal affective disorder, micro-depresso and Operation De-SADify
• A Laufey concert with a teenager, and discovering there's room for all of us
• How healing primitive reflexes changed Leonie's capacity for big overwhelming cities
• Tam's Slavic shamanic training and coming home to your own lineage
• Emotion as a pathway to the divine, instead of sitting still and being decorous
• Parenting your kids as they are, not as your ancestors assigned them
• Sandwich generation life and the tragedy-comedy of caring responsibilities

• Census night as competitive sport

KEY INSIGHTS

• Random crying is a useful depression indicator if you're not ordinarily a weepy soul. If you're welling up at nothing at the end of winter, up your light, your vitamin D and your outdoor hours.
• Nervous system work has profound effects.. Leonie went from wanting to hide in a bush in Sydney to happily sitting through an arena concert.
• The way you see your child can be an inherited story rather than a true one.
• Keep people around you who'll aren't afraid to tell you you're wrong. Leonie's husband told her she was misreading one of their kids, and he was right.

• Don't break under the pressure. Widen. That's what every grandmother before you did.
• Making money and keeping money are two different skills. A leaky container drains a great income.

NOTABLE QUOTES

"I don't want to be the mother that just gets all her feathers ruffled just because she's gotten some feedback." — Leonie

"Instead of feeling like I'm going to break under that pressure, I just keep thinking that I need to widen so I can hold it all." — Leonie

LINKS & RESOURCES

• Unicorn Biz & Life Academy, $99/year: https://www.leoniedawson.com/academy
• Join Leonie's mailing list for the illustrated book notes: https://www.leoniedawson.com
• Dandenong Ranges Litfest, programme launch 27 August, tickets 28 August: https://dandyrangeslitfest.net/
• Tam's Slavic shamanic teacher, Vlasta: https://www.tiktok.com/@thevlasta
• Iris Meyer, shamanic practitioner: https://brightshaman.com/

BOOKS MENTIONED:

• Indistractable by Nir Eyal
• The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
• Unnatural Habits (Phryne Fisher) by Kerry Greenwood

If this one resonated... make sure you hit subscribe pretty pls! A review takes 40 seconds and helps other gorgeous souls find us. And if you want the whole toolkit, the Academy is $99 a year for 100+ programs, monthly coaching, and the Make Your Money Back Challenge that pays for your membership before you've finished your cup of chai!

ABOUT YOUR HOSTS!

Leonie Dawson is a multi award-winning entrepreneur who has created over $16 million in revenue in part-time hours. She is the founder of the Unicorn Biz & Life Academy which helps 3,000 people build unique, joyful & abundant businesses.

https://www.leoniedawson.com

Tamara Protassow is a non-fiction writing mentor + creativity coach. She’s developed books with 55+ authors over 16 years, both for self-published authors as well as for Hay House UK.

https://www.tamaraprotassow.com

#WomenInBusiness #NeurodivergentEntrepreneur #AuDHD #CreativeBusiness #SpiritualBusiness #MidlifeWomen #SandwichGeneration #PersonalGrowth #SoulfulBusiness

At 8pm one night I got that look in my eyes. The one my husband knows means I'm about to ride the wild donkey.

By 4am I'd sent an email every hour, illustrated cartoons to go inside them, invented offers I'd never sold before, and slapped a 24-hour expiry on every single one. I also let people email me their OWN offers at their own price. Total made in that 24 hours: just over $42,000.

This episode is the full blow-by-blow. What I offered, what sold, what broke, and why I'd absolutely do it again.

Who this is for:

If you're a creative, neurodivergent business owner with twelve half-planned launches in your notebook and a nagging feeling that you need a proper strategy before you're allowed to sell anything, this one's for you. You don't need a funnel. You don't need a launch runway. You need permission to act on the wild idea while it's still hot.

Topics covered:

• What "riding the wild donkey" actually means, and why people still talk about it 15 years on
• The full list of offers I made (encouragograms, business audits, VIP days, 60% off Take Action Club)
• Letting my audience make ME offers, and how I decided yes or no
• Doing it all on PayPal links because setting up Kajabi properly would have killed the momentum
• The Kajabi outage that hit in the final hours, and how we handled it
• Why I don't track unsubscribes
• Decision fatigue, an inbox stuck at 86 emails, and needing a team who can run with chaos
• The full revenue breakdown
• The one offer that surprised me enough that I'm making it permanent

Key insights

• Speed is a feature. The idea arrived at 8pm and was live within the hour. Waiting would have flattened it.
• "Basic bitch" your systems when the alternative is not launching. I lost the Kajabi analytics and gained $42,000.
• A ticking 24-hour expiry does the persuading for you. No convincing required.
• Inviting people to name their own offer and their own price removed the ick from both sides. Some got a yes, some got a counter-offer, some got a no, and everyone stayed friends.
• Say no to discounting the thing that's already radically generous. The Academy stayed at full price all day.
• Things break in every launch. The checkout went down. I laughed, extended the deadline, and gave anyone who emailed us a 24-hour extension.
• Your team's tolerance for wild ideas is a hiring criteria, not a personality quirk. I've had assistants get cranky about unplanned launches. I need people who wake up delighted.
• Watch what people get unreasonably excited about. The annual Take Action Club option lit people up so much it's becoming a permanent offer.
• Fun is a business metric. Encouragograms recorded in the backyard and down by the river. Cat photos in the inbox. Offers to walk around an art gallery. That's the actual return.

Links and resources

• Get on the mailing list so you don't miss the next party: leoniedawson.com/love-letters
• Free illustrated Ride The Wild Donkey ebook
• Unicorn Biz & Life Academy: 100+ programs for $99 a year
• Take Action Club: weekly Productivity Power Hours and monthly Biz Planning workshops

• Courses mentioned: Sales Star, Money Manifesting & Multiple Streams of Income, Work Less Earn More, Midas Touch
• 2026 My Brilliant Year goal workbooks

• Still keen on offering more in-person VIP days in Canberra. Email [email protected] if you're interested!

If this made you want to go do something ridiculous, do it. Then come tell me about it. And if you're not on the mailing list yet, that's where the actual chaos happens: leoniedawson.com/love-letters

#WomenInBusiness #NeurodivergentEntrepreneur #ADHDBusinessOwner #CreativeBusiness #OnlineBusiness #MarketingExperiment #IntuitiveBusiness #SoulfulBusiness #WomenSupportingWomen #MoneyMindset

Ever been told the only way to "fly at the pointy end of the plane" is to hustle 24/7, live away from home 340 days a year, and barely see your kids? Leonie's response: are you fu**ing stupid?

This week she pulls back the red velvet curtain on her quarterly planning retreat — the rituals, the lake ceremonies, the non-alcoholic botanical wine, and the exact process she runs to help women plan a whole quarter in a single day. And Tam shares what it was like for her to be in the receiving seat for it... and what changed for her business from doing it.

Who this is for: If you're a creative, healer, or coach who's so deep in the to-do list you can't see your own business clearly anymore — and you're craving strategy that doesn't smell like bro-marketing — this one's for you. Especially if you're neurodivergent, sensitive, and done with hustle culture telling you to JUST DO MORE! WORK MORE HOURS! HUSTLE HUSTLE!

Topics covered:

• How Leonie structures a full-day quarterly planning retreat
• Why reviewing last quarter matters more than vision-setting
• Letting-go rituals, lake ceremonies, and celebration circles
• Hot-seating: why other people see your business clearer than you do
• The anti-patriarchal case against hustle culture
• Choosing a venue by energy, nature, and grounding (not corporate boardrooms)
• Introducing Content Blast — a month of content done in one day

Key insights:

• There's gold to mine in what just happened — review before you plan, every time
• Celebration shifts your identity: you plan the next quarter as someone who's already made miracles
• Brainstorming for OTHER people's businesses builds the muscle to see your own clearly
• Hustle's only answer is "more" — but we live in a finite world, and the "more" gets stolen from your kids, your body, your relationships
• Most hustle bros have someone (usually a woman) holding everything else together
• You can fly business class without burning your life to the ground
• You don't have to use everything in the Academy — one thing makes your money back
• The easiest business model on earth: serve, over-deliver, and people stay for decades

Notable quotes:

"I can fly at the pointy end of the plane, and I am away from my children zero days of the year." — Leonie

"Does he think that's a flex? Let me show you a fuc*ing flex." — Tam

"I just serve and over-deliver and make it so exceptional that people stay for years, decades. It's the easiest business model on earth." — Leonie

Links & resources:

• Content Blast (free inside the Academy, sign up in the next week): leoniedawson.com/blast
• Unicorn Biz & Life Academy — 150+ programs, under $100/year
• Grow Mastermind — next quarterly retreat is in September
• New member? Email [email protected] for your handmade "start here" list

Subscribe and review: If this episode lit you up, hit subscribe and leave a quick review — it helps more glorious humans find their way here. And if you want to actually get your content DONE with us in the room together, come to Content Blast!

#WomenInBusiness #NeurodivergentEntrepreneur #AntiHustle #CreativeBusiness #SpiritualBusiness #ADHDinBusiness #SmallBusinessOwner #ContentCreation #WomenSupportingWomen #ConsciousBusiness

Settle in with a cup of tea, because this one's a saga. Leonie and Tam get into what actually happens when you criticise someone's cult, and it's messier than you'd think.

Why does a cult follower treat your concern like a personal attack? What's DARVO and how do you spot it mid-conversation? Leonie shares losing a business friend over speaking up, how she's holding compassion without leaving herself open to abuse, and why she'd do it all again tomorrow.

Then it goes properly wild: the very real energetic backlash they both copped after publishing their last cult episode and the nature-based clearing ritual that fixed it (wombats, kangaroos, bees, chestnuts, and a dead brother with hail-room access, all included). We're not even kidding. I swear to the Great Goddess these podcast descriptions keep getting more unhinged and yet they are 100% factual.

Topics covered:

• What really happens when you raise cult concerns with someone you love
• Why criticism of a cult leader feels like a personal attack to the follower
• DARVO explained (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender) and how to spot it
• Holding compassion for people stuck in the dynamic without opening yourself to abuse
• Losing a business friend over speaking up, and choosing growth over a burnt bridge
• The very real energetic backlash Leonie and Tam experienced after publishing
• A full nature-based energy clearing: wombats, kangaroos, bees, chestnuts and all
• Why gossip and "telling the bees" actually serve a purpose

Key insights:

• People rarely react well to "I'm worried about you" — not because they don't love you, but because their identity has merged with the leader's. The defensiveness is proof of the dynamic, not their true self.
• Sunk cost is brutal. The deeper the money, time and identity invested, the harder the reaction. "If she's right, then I am wrong" is unbearable, so the brain fights it.
• DARVO is designed to destabilise you. If you feel like you're in a washing machine, step back, ground, and name it: "That's not what's happening here."
• You can leave a door open for a restorative conversation without leaving a door open for abuse.

• Speaking the truth can cost you relationships AND be 100% worth it if it helps even one person spot the dynamic sooner.
• Coming back to nature, your body, and the land dissolves the distortion. Cult energy is a miasma. The earth reminds you what's actually real.

Links & resources mentioned:

• Previous episode: Ep #243 My $30,000 Cult Mistake → leoniedawson.com/my-30000-cult-mistake

• Unicorn Biz & Life Academy → leoniedawson.com
• Leonie's new offering: Content Blast! Get a month of content done in 1 day → leoniedawson.com/blast

Who this is for: If you're a sensitive, spiritual, often-neurodivergent creative who's watched someone you love disappear into a "coach" or "program" that feels a teeny bit culty, this one's for you. Especially if you tend to absorb everyone's energy, second-guess yourself when someone turns the blame around, and need permission to protect your peace without going full scorched-earth.

If you've got a soul in your life who needs to hear this podcast, please share it along. It means the world to us!

#LeonieDawson #CultRecovery #DARVO #NeurodivergentEntrepreneur #EnergyProtection #WomenInBusiness #SpiritualBusiness #ConsciousEntrepreneur #HealingJourney #ADHDinBusiness

Leonie took 12 of her biz besties on retreat, had a full-blown past-life vision in the winter ocean (stone cold sober), hired an actual horse off Facebook for a unicorn photoshoot, got her t*ts out to make someone feel less vulnerable, and discovered that every single woman in the room had lost her phone at least three times that day.

Tam gets the full debrief — plus how Leonie built this peer mastermind from scratch, why she removed a $100M business owner for lurking, and what happened when she cold-DM'd 50 strangers to find entrepreneur friends in Canberra.

Topics Covered:

• How Leonie built her peer mastermind from scratch starting in 2012
• Setting boundaries and removing members who don't fit (even famous ones)
• What the retreat week actually looks like — structure, food, spa days, midnight chats
• The power of post-it note round-table brainstorming vs rigid hot seats
• Denise Duffield-Thomas leading a money mistakes ritual
• Leonie's full-blown Atlantis/Lemuria vision on the beach (100% sober)
• Hiring a real horse for unicorn brand photos — and the chaos of coordinating horse people on Facebook
• The Grow Mastermind quarterly planning retreat in Canberra (16 June)

Key Insights:

• Don't wait for someone to invite you — create the mastermind, the circle, the dinner. Leonie cold-DM'd 50 strangers on Instagram to build her Canberra entrepreneur network.
• Curating a mastermind is gardening work: you plant, you tend, you weed. If you don't weed, the space becomes something it was never supposed to be.
• Selection isn't about finding the biggest business — it's about ethics, values, spirit, and alignment. Vibes over revenue.
• Having hard conversations (like removing someone) is part of leading leaders. It's painful, but it protects the group's safety and energy.
• Normalise the mess. Every woman at this retreat forgot things, booked wrong dates, lost their phones. Multi-six and seven-figure businesses, run by ADHD humans who eat car biscuits. You don't need to have it together to be successful.
• Retreats don't need rigid schedules. The best conversations happen when you let things flow — dinners in hotel rooms, post-it note walls, and spontaneous rituals.
• Jealousy is a signpost, not a stop sign. If you feel envious of someone's mastermind, that's your sign to create your own.
• When your kids get older and need less of your physical-plane energy, spiritual gifts can come flooding back.

Notable Quotes:

• "We're not fucking wallflowers, we're the fucking belles of the ball. And if we're not the belles of the ball, we'll make our own fucking ball." — Leonie
• "You can eat car biscuits and have an amazing multi-six, seven figure business. It's fine. You don't have to have it all together." — Tam
• "I am not a damsel that just sits around waiting for something to come find her." — Leonie
• "You are the fucking knight in shining armour. You can literally hire your own white horse and be your own goddess." — Leonie

If you're a creative business owner who's been craving real connection with other women who get it — the ADHD chaos, the spiritual side, the six-figure goals alongside the sensory overwhelm — this one's for you. Whether you've got a thriving business or you're still finding your people, this episode is your permission slip to stop waiting and start building your own circle.

If this episode lit a fire under you, go grab Leonie's free Mastermind Planner at leoniedawson.com/mastermind and start dreaming up your own circle. And if you want to be IN the room with Leonie and Tam, the Grow Mastermind quarterly planning retreat is happening 16 June in Canberra — join the Grow Mastermind to get your spot.

#WomenInBusiness #Mastermind #NeurodivergentEntrepreneur #ADHDBusiness #BusinessRetreat #WomenSupportingWomen #SpiritualBusiness #CreativeEntrepreneur #PeerMastermind #MakeYourOwnBall

Tam and I got WILDLY into it this week. We're talking energy hygiene — how to clear your energy, protect your space, shield your biz, and yes, even your bloody phone. Because that thing is an actual energy portal that can zap ya!

We share the actual daily rituals we use (salt scrubs! crystal grids! hands in the dirt at 6am!), Tam debuts her new favourite concept — Resting Bitch Energy (RBE) — and I tell the story of the enormous black obsidian dildo I placed on my property boundary to deal with a dic*head neighbour. As you do.

If you're a sensitive, spiritual creative who absorbs everyone's feelings like a human sponge, feels fuzzy and anxious for no good reason, or suspects your phone might be energetically fuc*ing with your sleep… this one's for you, possum.

What we get into:

• How to call your soul back into your body (and the signs it's wandered off — hello clumsiness, brain fog + random anxiety)
• Why you literally cannot process another person's feelings for them, and how to return their energy to sender
• Salt scrubs, salt bowls, black salt, and keeping salt next to your bed
• Tam's RBE — Resting Bitch Energy — aka the BEST protection upgrade
• Working with angels, guides + well ancestors (and why you do NOT want to call in your batshit crazy recent ancestors)
• Crystal gridding your property with black tourmaline, obsidian, rose quartz + more
• Sigils for protection (ancient practice, dead easy to do)
• Smoking herbs, resins, essential oils + DIY mist sprays
• Your phone as an energy portal — why it doesn't belong in your bedroom
• Using your ancestry DNA to find YOUR ancestral spiritual traditions (I took mine to Claude and it was FASCINATING)
• Outsourcing to energy healers + body workers when the DIY isn't enough
• Boundaries as energy protection. Full stop.
• Nurturing your energy through joy, creativity, nature + community

Gems from this episode:

• Your soul can drift just a couple of inches out of your body — and it shows up as anxiety, clumsiness, feeling not-quite-yourself. A 30-second practice of calling it home can shift everything.
• You can't heal someone else's energy for them. That's their job. When you're holding their stuff, your body gets confused because it can't DO anything with it. Give it to the earth. Even shit turns into gold in the ecosystem.
• Kids under seven will naturally show up in your energy field. That's normal + healthy — they're building their systems off yours.
• The strongest protection isn't an elaborate ritual that makes you late for everything. It's being SO full of your own energy there's no room for anyone else's.
• Your phone is an energy portal to the world. Remove it from the bedroom. Place crystals near your computer. Write a prayer in your notes app. It sounds woo and it WORKS.

Quotes we loved:

"I actually think I have RBE — Resting Bitch Energy. Stuff doesn't stick to that." — Tam

"You can't process another person's feelings for them. You can't heal their energy for them. That is their job and theirs alone." — Leonie

"Your imagination is for seeing what's really there." — Tam

Links + resources mentioned:

• Midas Touch — 11-day meditation program inside the Academy. People keep telling us there was a before Midas Touch and an after. It's some of the biggest soul lessons I've ever learned, turned into minutes. leoniedawson.com/midas
• Creative Goddess Embodied 2.0 — inside the Academy leoniedawson.com/creative
• Protective Magic by Stacey DiMarco — gorgeous book on protection techniques
• Andrea Rae — Crystal Academy
• Hiro Boga — intuitive healer
• Kerry Rowett — kinesiologist + intuitive
• Renee Longworth — energy clearing for properties

If this episode gave you something good, we would love a five-star review. It genuinely helps people find us — especially when we talk about topics that ruffle a few feathers.

Big love,Leonie + Tam ✨

#EnergyProtection #ClearYourEnergy #SpiritualBusiness #WomenEntrepreneurs #CrystalGrid #NeurodivergentLife #WooAndBusiness #EnergyHygiene #SpiritualPractice

Darlingheart,

You know that feeling where your brain is on fire, your to-do list has become sentient, and somebody wants to know what's for dinner AGAIN?

Yeah. Tam and I get it. We get it in our BONES.

So we sat down and talked about the two levers you've actually got for overwhelm. (Two! That's double the levers! Exponential growth, baby!) One of them you probably already know. The other one? Freaking life-changing. I didn't discover it until about a year ago and it's been WILD the difference it has made in reducing overwhelm.

If you're a neurodivergent creative drowning in business + parenting + caring roles + all the fekking things, and you've been white-knuckling your way through wondering why "just try harder" hasn't worked... this one's for you.

In this episode we get into:

• Why your capacity is completely different from that extrovert with plans out the butthole (and why comparing is pointless)
• Traffic light colour-coding your calendar so you can SEE the burnout coming
• Golden weeks (my secret weapon — one week a month with NO calls)
• The broom-path housework standard that saved my marriage and my sanity
• Getting your kids to do their own washing from primary school
• Robot vacuums with names (mine's Melissa, Tam's is the Scutter, because of course)
• The primitive reflex thing that tripled my nervous system capacity (I KNOW)
• Breathwork, sleep, nature + the supplements that actually help ADHD brains
• Tam's husband discovering that sunshine is... far infrared. We dieeeeeeeeee.

Quotes that hit:

"I really need you to reduce your standards. I really need you to stop trying to be the perfect mum here because it's wrecking your mental health." — My husband Chris, being very wise over lunch

"I centered myself so I became the main character of my own life." — Tam

"We're just complicated houseplants. We need food, we need sunlight, we need fresh air and water." — Tam, being a poet

"I can do two, three times the amount of work that I used to. And it does not cost in the way that it used to cost me." — Me, still stunned about the primitive reflex resolution thing

Stuff we mentioned:

• Laundry Lady (laundry pickup service — Australia)
• HelloFresh + Marley Spoon (meal kits)
• You Foodz (pre-made meals delivered)
• Roborock (the fancy robot vacuum/mop — yes it detects poo)
• David Elliott — breathwork meditation
• Get Dopa (combined ADHD supplement, UK)
• Primal Energy (beef organ supplement, Australia)
• Dr Sharon Williams (chiropractor — primitive reflex resolution)

Free meditations from me: leoniedawson.com/shit ✨

If this helped you see a lever you hadn't tried, send it to a friend who needs it. And if you've got a sec, a five-star review means more overwhelmed humans can find us.

Big love,Leonie + Tam

#ReduceOverwhelm #NeurodivergentLife #AUDHDBusiness #NervousSystemRegulation #WorkLessEarnMore #ADHDEntrepreneur #MumBurnout #PrimitiveReflexes #BreathworkHealing #LeonieDawson

Ever spent $30,000 on a business coach that turned out to be a cult? Leonie has. In this episode, she's sharing the full story of how she got sucked into a business coaching program that used textbook cult dynamics — and what it took to get herself back out.

Vague spiritual word salad. Moving goalposts. A Facebook group full of people having "breakthroughs" you can't quite seem to unlock. A coach who purports to have special "codes" or "divine downloads" that you can only access through her. Sound familiar? This episode pulls apart the cult dynamics hiding inside online business coaching — starting with Leonie's own $30K painful lesson.

If you've felt that magnetic pull toward a coach or program that promises to unlock everything, or if you've already gone down that rabbit hole and you're sitting in the shame of it — this one's for you.

Topics Covered

• Where cult dynamics show up beyond actual cults (families, schools, business coaching, politics)
• Leonie's full story of joining a $30,000 coaching program that was run like a cult
• How word salad, vague spiritual language, and repetition create belief over time
• Why sunk cost keeps people stuck long after the red flags appear
• Robert Lifton's criteria for thought reform and how they map to coaching environments
• Why neurodivergent people are particularly vulnerable to cult-like dynamics
• The energetic and emotional cleanup process after leaving
• How Leonie runs her own coaching differently because of this experience

Key Insights

• Cult dynamics aren't limited to cults — they show up in families, schools, spiritual groups, political movements, and business coaching containers.
• If a coach positions themselves as the ONLY source of a particular knowledge or "divine download," that's a massive red flag.
• Neurodivergent brains are especially vulnerable: the puzzle-solving drive, the dopamine hit of "getting closer," the tendency to take people at face value, and the lifelong conditioning of "maybe I'm the problem."
• Vague, poetic, non-concrete teaching is a feature, not a bug — it keeps you coming back because you can never confirm whether you "got it."
• If the solution to not getting results is always to invest more, go deeper, or become a better student, you're in a cult dynamic.
• The shame belongs to the person creating the manipulative environment, not the person who got caught in it.
• Sunk cost fallacy is powerful — Leonie could only face leaving by framing it as a "three-month break" rather than quitting outright.
• Intelligent, successful people are consistently shown by research to be susceptible to cult dynamics. It's not about being naive.
• Creating proprietary language creates insiders and outsiders, and strips people of vocabulary to describe their experience once they leave.
• Non-disparagement clauses in coaching contracts don't hold up under the US Federal Trade Commission.

Notable Quotes

• "You wanted the dopamine hit of figuring it out. Each step along the way gave you another little dopamine hit of I'm getting closer, I'm getting closer. Pattern-seeking brains plus the deliberate hiding of the pattern is really addictive — it's just crack." — Tam

Links & Resources Mentioned

• Previous episode: Ep #220: Coaching Myths Busted!
• Previous episode: Ep #219: Narcissists at Work, Home & In Families
• Knitting Cult Lady on TikTok — author of The Culting of America
• Robert Lifton's thought reform criteria (1960s research)

If this episode hit home for you, share it with a friend who might need to hear it.

#CultDynamics #BusinessCoaching #NeurodivergentEntrepreneur #AuDHD #OnlineBusiness #CoachingRedFlags #WomenInBusiness #CultRecovery

Leonie's back after a break, recording this one solo from bed (because minimal viable podcast is still podcast), and she's spilling everything from the last six weeks — a $151K launch month, an intimate in-person retreat, an ADHD food-forgetting saga, a holiday that healed her heart, and enough book and TV recommendations to fill your entire weekend.

Who this is for: If you're a neurodivergent creative who's been told there's only one "right" way to launch, or you're wondering whether courses and memberships still work in the age of AI, this episode is your permission slip and your proof of concept all in one.

Topics covered:

• How Leonie ran a $151K launch month with zero paid ads and zero pre-written content HO HO HO
• The return of Backstage Pass and why launching in public keeps her accountable
• Running an affiliate competition that paid out $7,500+ in commissions (and a crystal dildo)
• Hosting her first small in-person retreat for Grow Mastermind members
• The confidence-before-competence trap and why you have to do the thing to build the thing
• Healing unresolved primitive reflexes and the nervous system capacity shift it created
• Life updates — kids turning 12 and 16, a healing holiday to Jervis Bay
• Book reviews, TV recommendations, and a rant about thought leaders staying silent on politics

Key insights:

• You don't need everything pre-written to launch. Leonie decided what to launch on a Wednesday and had the sales page live by midnight. Waiting for "ready" means never launching.

• Adding live chat (Chatra) to her website during launch converted browsers: 45% of chats were sales questions.
• Confidence and competence aren't prerequisites — they're byproducts of doing the thing. Leonie was nervous before her first intimate retreat despite having run conferences for 100+ people.
• An 85% profit margin came from keeping expenses radically low: ~$23,200 total costs against $151K revenue.
• Unresolved primitive reflexes can dramatically affect neurodivergent adults — healing them gave Leonie significantly more nervous system capacity and reduced autistic burnout symptoms.
• When your body is out of alignment (literally — displaced tailbone), your energy and spirit follow. Bodywork during launches isn't optional.
• Technology disruption is the pattern, not the exception. Netflix pivoted through DVDs nobody owned, an internet nobody trusted, and a dot-com bubble bursting — courses and memberships aren't dead, they're adapting.

Notable quotes:

• "I will not abandon myself in this process. I will still be my own cheerleader. I will alchemize all of this into gold and I will do this in a way that is loving and kind to myself."
• "The only way to build confidence and competence is by actually doing the fucking thing."
• "I love that I've been able to send $900,000 to women's small business owners instead of doing paid advertising with billion dollar social media companies."

Links & resources mentioned:

• Backstage Pass — leoniedawson.com/backstage
• Unicorn Biz & Life Academy — leoniedawson.com/academy
• Million Dollar Memberships program (inside the Academy)
• Chatra live chat
• Burnout to Breakthrough podcast episode
• That Will Never Work by Marc Randolph (Netflix memoir)
• Our Members Be Unlimited by Sam Wallman (graphic nonfiction)
• Still Bobby by Bobby Brown (beauty brand memoir)
• My Story by Jo Malone (fragrance brand memoir)
• Rachel Rogers' Substack piece on obsolete jobs
• TV: The Other Bennet Sister, Last One Laughing UK, Mum (BBC), Celebrity Traitors UK
• Dr. Sharon Williams, chiropractor/kinesiologist in Canberra (primitive reflexes)

If you loved this episode, share it with a friend who needs to hear that launching doesn't have to look like everyone else's version. Leave a five-star review wherever you listen — it helps more neurodivergent creatives find us.

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