Hint of Hustle with Heather Sager

Unlock More Creativity, Productivity & Magnetism by Working WITH Your Cycle with Renae Fieck

April 04, 2022 Heather Sager Episode 143
Hint of Hustle with Heather Sager
Unlock More Creativity, Productivity & Magnetism by Working WITH Your Cycle with Renae Fieck
Show Notes Transcript

Have you ever felt super motivated to create a plan for your business, but a week later when it’s time to do the work you ghost on your scheduled lives, abandon your content batching blocks and end up in front of Netflix with all the snacks?

It’s confusing because sometimes you’re on FIRE and in flow, then the crash of the entrepreneurial roller coaster has you questioning EVERYTHING.

We often joke that it’s the life of business ownership— but what if it actually was more than that?

Today’s guest, Renae Fieck, will help you understand how your CYCLE impacts your business. Yep, we’re talking about Aunt Flow, our not so silent, business partner.

It’s one of the most empowering conversations I have had in quite some time, so I encourage you to listen with an open mind (and maybe a journal).

Renae is on a mission to change the way women lead and run businesses. She’ll help us understand the four phases of our cycle – how it impacts our communication and creativity to allow us to leverage and use it to our advantage so that we’re not feeling blindsided by things coming at us and show up in our business with the highest level of magnetism

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Brace yourself, friend, because this episode is going to blow you away, and I say that because I am. I just wrapped up the interview and holy cow, I. Okay, let's just be honest. I have very low expectations for this conversation today not because of my guest, but because of the topic. We're talking about your cycle. And I think why I'm most blown away is this is not something that as women we publicly talk about unless we're in a closed mastermind with other women. And we talk about, I don't know, our ovaries, or how we have the hungryness for chocolate the week before our period. We don't really talk about our periods or our cycles in empowering ways, it's typically a, like are this other thing coming to rain on our parade every month. But this conversation that I just had with today's guest, Rene Fieck, is on the show and we are talking about how we as women can be so empowered running our businesses by understanding the four phases of our cycle and tapping into them to really show up in the best way possible. The reason why I love this interview is first of all for so many reasons, but because as an entrepreneur, you want to show up in a more magnetic way. And sometimes it's just, you're not gonna feel like showing up and it's not because anything's wrong with you, or you're lazy, or you're just terrible at video, it could be because of where you're at in your cycle. So this was one of the most empowering conversations I have had in quite some time. You're going to meet Renae today. She has an incredible way of how she talks about this. She helps us get over the taboo nature of the topic about cycles. We talk about stats. We talk about when you want to give your body some rest and recharge and when you want to schedule speaking gigs so that you're at your best. There's so many things we cover about today around how to not just track your cycle of when you bleed, but specifically what you should be tracking so you can optimize how you show up. Yes, friend, we get into all of it. You're going to love this conversation and hate when we get to the end. Renea is going to talk about, I'm very excited about this. She has a three part training coming up all about helping you understand how your cycle cross sections with your business. I'm going to be coming to this training. She's going to be launching her group coaching program shortly on the back end of it. I want you to check it out if this interview resonates with you, so head to the show notes to grab all the links and all the details but pay attention, grab a cup of coffee, you're about to hang out with your gal pals and talk about what we're not as supposed to talk about but we're going to talk about and we're going to make it a normative thing. Friend, you're gonna love this episode. Here we go.


Well, hey, Renea, welcome to the Heather Sager Show.


Renae Fieck  5:11  

Thanks for having me on. I'm so excited to be here. 


Heather Sager  5:13  

Me, too. I was telling you before we hit record here that this conversation is one, well I've never talked about on the show before and I'm most excited for that. But also, the majority of my audience is women so this topic is definitely going to relate with them. And if it doesn't directly relate to them, they know when someone who this relates to. So we're talking about our cycles today and how they overlap with how we show up in our businesses. So before anybody runs away, say in like, oh, my gosh, Heather's talking about our cycles on the podcast. Can you just share a little bit around like, why is like cycles? One, why are you so excited about it? And two like, why do we need to be paying attention to this conversation?


Renae Fieck  5:54  

Yeah, well, so I think I learned, well, we all most of us learned about our cycles, when we were like, 10, 12, 13, somewhere around there. But we probably didn't learn a whole lot about them and I think it was about five or six years ago, somebody had talked about I was in a mastermind and she talked about all this stuff around your cycles and how it impacts you. And I was like, oh, that's fascinating. And it became this entry point for me to start learning about cycle thinking and I really didn't do a whole lot with it at that point in time but it was just like this awareness. And then over the years, I started working with women who were just feeling burnt out and overwhelmed and so I started sharing about our cycles and how there were certain times I felt like I wanted to burn everything down and I felt like the world's worst person and I just had nothing in me. And then other times, I felt wonderful and amazing and I wanted to take on the biggest things in the world. And then really started to notice like, oh, my gosh, all of this is really matching up with the cycles that she had shared five years before. And so that's when I really started to dig into it and learn everything we do, like everything about us as women is impacted by our cycles, like our hormones are so different than men. 


Most of us are operating in that 9 to 5, 24 hour sort of rhythm and that is really geared and optimized for men. And women are very, very different. And so when we start to look at that and change that, it changes the way we can work, it changes the way we interact with our families, it changes how much energy we feel and how we exercise, how we sleep, how we eat, like everything that we do is impacted by our cycles, and most women just don't know about it so, yeah.


Heather Sager  7:40  

I love this. And it's, you know, it's fascinating, I was listening to one of your previous podcast episodes on your show which is awesome by the way, that'll be a good follow up for anyone who's really excited about this. 


Renae Fieck  7:51  

Yeah. 


Heather Sager  7:51  

I mean, it's a weird word, excited about this conversation. I think that's okay to say, intrigued by this conversation, but one of the things you were talking about is just how like taboo, it feels for some reason for many of us to talk outwardly about our periods, about our cycle. Can you just talk about that for a moment?  Let's just call out the elephant in the room. I know for me, three, four years ago, publicly talking, I mean, I would have never imagined talking about this on a podcast or on a stage of any sort. But as an entrepreneur, like we start thinking about, I don't know, there's space to start thinking about other parts of life that maybe we didn't have in the rush of corporate world. So can you talk about that taboo nature for anybody who's like, seriously, Heather, we're having this conversation right now?


Renae Fieck  8:37  

Yeah. Well, I think that it comes from a lot of different angles, right? The taboo sense of why we don't talk about it, and why it's here, why we have so much stigma around it. I think there's many different layers and many different facets to it. So to have the conversation, say like, where did it all come from and how did it get here? It's I think multi-layered, but even just historically, right? Like, there were the red tents and all of those women that went into the red tent, whether it be that it was celebrated or it was like we're ostracizing you from the community. There's two totally different experiences I think women had in that vein, there's in the workforce, it was seen as a hindrance, right, like that you have to keep up with men and we have to be producing just like men. And so we tried to push it aside and even now I have people commenting on my stuff all the time about it's a private bodily function that we just don't talk about, like it's private. You keep it to yourself. And so there's so many different layers of why we don't talk about it. It's either something culturally we've been taught, generationally we've been taught, or we've had some embarrassing moment with it, and we just don't want to ever have to relive that embarrassing moment again. 


Even for me, like it's still something, I remember when I was considering transitioning into talking and really sharing about this. I posted I think in business community space. I think it might have been this one that we're in. I said, I just don't want to talk about periods all the time. I know this is so helpful, but I just don't want to talk about it. And I think that was because of that stigma and that taboo, like it's just, it's not a conversation I wanted to be having but here I am. So I think that it comes from that which I think also really empowers all of us as women now to be able to help change that and shape that for the next generation. And that's one of the big things a lot of the women I work with, they come to me and they're like, this is amazing. I've never heard this before. How do I tell my kids? Like, how do I talk to my kids about this so that they don't ever grow up with that shame and stigma and they really do embrace their bodies in much different ways from the very get-go, and it doesn't have to have that same loop that we've experienced?


Heather Sager  10:54  

Yeah, it's so good. And you know, one of the stats I thought was really interesting in the episode I was listening this morning of your show, you were citing some of the statistics that came from I think it's a period underwear company. One of the ones I brought, I had stopped, I was on my walk this morning when I was listening to this. It was very early in the morning and I'm rocking around the neighborhood and pitch dark with a little headlamp on and I stopped to actually type this out. There are two statistics that really made me stop. And it was one of them was 50% of men think it's inappropriate to talk about this in the workplace. 


Renae Fieck  11:27  

Yep. 


Heather Sager  11:27  

And then the second one you had mentioned was 63% of women cancel their plans due to something related to their cycle? Can you just talk about that for a little bit and why that's I mean, something that we really need to pay attention to?


Renae Fieck  11:40  

Yeah, I think, even if you just look at it, like the most workplaces are were built in a masculine sort of business space, and so it has a very much masculine energy. And I think the we have the power to shift that now, right, like that's kind of the mission that I'm on is to help create this more feminine based businesses, right, like women leading businesses differently. And so but just having the conversation in the workplace is huge, that if you go to work and you're working the same every single day throughout the month, you're going to be functioning very differently. There's going to be time in the month when you are going to be so wonderful and so great at, you know, reading a presentation, and there's going to be a time of the month when you're going to be great at doing all of the admin stuff on the back end. 


And so to think that you have to show up at work in the same way every single day, is actually throttling and limiting what you're able to do and how you're able to perform in the workplace, and so how powerful would it be if we had the confidence and we felt comfortable to come into our workplaces and talk to people and say, hey, this is not where I'm at in my cycle right now, and I actually could perform much better, have higher levels of productivity if I operated in this way. But right now, the stigma is that men think it's inappropriate like, and I think part of that is because there isn't this awareness around productivity. There isn't the awareness of all of these other layers to it. It's just this bleeding stigma part of it, like there's just so different understanding of that. And then the other part of it of this idea of like canceling plans, one, is because oftentimes women, there's actually a lot of women that don't even pay attention to their cycles, like they have no idea when it's coming, what's happening, when it's going to be. And so they might schedule something that they really want to do and then they get there and it just doesn't feel like it. They're just don't have the energy, whether or not it's actually when you're bleeding or if it's in that week or so before, you might just not feel it you because your body is naturally not made to be in that space. And so you're cancelling, but then on top of that, you're not only just canceling and saying like, hey, I just don't feel it because of where I'm at in my cycle. 


The statistic that I shared in there that people have to feel like they have to come up with some excuse as to why they're canceling and can't be honest about why they're canceling. so it's just the awareness of where you're at. So I know I'm sure we'll probably get into it. But like I plan my business launches, I plan these trainings, I plan podcast interviews, I plan everything around where I'm at, so that I don't get into those moments where I'm like, I just don't feel this, I don't want to do this, I'm gonna cancel it, or I would have pushed through and forced myself and then it feels like crap, like, all of that type of stuff.


Heather Sager  14:36  

I think this is really going to resonate with people in an interesting way, right? So we talk a lot about showing up sharing your voice on stages, virtual stages, live stages on video. And you know, a lot of people who find me, many of them have a fear of visibility and they really muster up the courage to do it. But I just wonder if anyone's listening thinking like, oh, man If they find themselves ghosting on their scheduled lives or this is the week I'm going to do it. maybe part of that, yes, is fear of the camera and lack of preparation or lack of knowing what to do. But I wonder if there is a correlation between that lack of visibility or that lack of just wanting to put themselves out there, like with this cross section of our cycles? So let's talk about that because one of the things that you break down is there, you help educate women around what actually happens on a cycle, right? And I will tell you hands down, I mean, I know technically what's happening with my lady parts, but also, I'm not one of those people, I'm just going to pull this full disclaimer out. I'm not one of those people who's like cycle aware frenzy because my cycle has always been inconsistent. So I'm gonna throw this out there because I do want you to address this potential roadblock. It all sounds well and great for a woman who has a 28 day cycle, that has never been me to the point I really struggled to get pregnant, because my cycles sometimes was 60 to 70 days. These days, I'm much less stress, it's much more consistent, but it's still not. I did not have a 28 day cycle and I do not have this same cycle every month. So can you talk about how like the phases of cycles and then let's also weave in the, for somebody who doesn't have that quintessential 28 day window, what I'm talking about here?


Renae Fieck  16:23  

Yeah, yeah. So really like a basic biology and understanding your cycle. We have estrogen and progesterone are the two major hormones that play. So estrogen is more dominant in that first half of the month and then once you ovulate, then progesterone kicks in, and the estrogen dips and the progesterone rises. So in a very basic biologic sort of explanation, that's what's going on underneath your body. And so as that's happening, your estrogen has a much more, I call it outward energy. It's much more outward focused, you feel really motivated, you've got lots of momentum, you might feel really great about getting big projects up off the ground, all of that type of stuff, then progesterone kicks in, and it makes you more in that inner space, that inner energy, and so it makes you want to recoup and maybe you're still feeling productive, but in your house sort of productivity or more admin based productivity or things of that nature. 


And so you have very different outward energy, inward energy in the month, then even in that breaking it down even further, I have what I call the four phases. And so the four phases, number one, would be when you're actually bleeding and so that's your recharge phase. And really, truly, that's what you should be focused on in that phase is recharging. Giving yourself space, getting off social media, taking a break, whatever it might look like. It doesn't have to be just completely resting and binging and doing what Netflix binging the whole time. But really looking at what do you need to recharge? What do you need to fill your cup, fill your battery, because that next phase is your accelerate phase. So looking at it kind of like the Tesla, I use this analogy a lot because I love it. But a Tesla runs on battery and if you don't charge a Tesla, it's not going to go anywhere. Like if you drive out in the middle of the desert and you don't have a charging station, eventually it's going to stop and you're not going to be able to keep going. And so why is women do we think that we can just keep going without ever recharging? And so how beautiful that your body has this natural recharge built in every single month. 


And so looking at as that, looking at, hey, if I take this recharge right now, when I enter into that next phase, the accelerate phase, I'm actually entering into that phase with my juices loaded, like I am ready to go ready to hit the ground running and I'm going to hit my highest levels of productivity because I've created that space for the recharge. So once you enter into that accelerate phase that is a prime time for getting big stuff done, getting big projects off the ground, lots of momentum. Oftentimes women feel ready to take on the world, feel super productive, hearing ambitious, driven woman, like most women would love to hang out in this phase all the time if it was possible because it just feels so good. And then you reach the top which is that connect phase right around the time when you would be ovulating. So in that ovulation phase, you do feel the most magnetic, you feel the most radiant, you probably are more confident showing up on lives and doing those trainings. You're going to feel ready and eager to do that. You're going to feel like you're not stumbling around your words as much. You're going to feel more communicative and relatable. All that type of stuff. It's the time you know to do photoshoots or go shopping and get your hair done like anything sort of in that glowing outward appearance. 


And then you enter the reflect phase and oftentimes a lot of people have that connotation of it being PMS in that phase. But really, please take a look at all four of these phases. Each one of them has its own little superpower. And I think the reflect phase is just as powerful, if not more powerful than any of the other ones as well. So in that reflect phase, it gives you a prime time to really take a step back from all of that outward energy you've just expressed, and really look inward in what worked for you, what wasn't working for you, what do you need to let go of, what do you want to change and move forward in the next month, all that type of stuff, and really create that space to listen to yourself. You can be really emotional, right? Because we have all those PMS hormones people talk about. like you feel really emotional in that phase but it's also your most creative phase. So if you're writing content for your business, if you're, you know, doing any sort of writing or creating in that way, this is a prime time to do that because you're going to be able to relate to your audience much more powerfully than in any of the other phases. So each one of these phases has something that you could geared towards. 


So if it's in business and you're looking at, hey, I've got to create social content, then in this phase is when you would write it. Your connect phase is when you're going to record it or do the lives or all those types of things. Your accelerate phase is when you're going to schedule them, you're going to get them planned out, you're going to get it all organized, you're going to get all the you know, things put together for it, the trainings, the pamphlets, all that kind of stuff. And then your recharge gives you that space to actually take a break and do it. So each one of them helps you flow in this more rhythm than feeling like you're scrambling and shuffling and hustling all the time. And it allows you to almost batch better and then you're working in that zone of genius with where your body's at. So, like you said, there are going to be times when you don't feel like showing up on social, right, like I have a client she was like, all good, so good. I'm posting consistently, I'm doing a reel every day. And then I ghost for two weeks, because my body just doesn't feel it. And so now that she knows this and knows what's happening, we batch it so that she has social content to roll out during that time. But she's not actually having to do it. She's not actually having to be present and show up visibly when she doesn't feel like it. She can recluse back and just like text and message on there, not have to actually have her face on there when she doesn't feel that way. But batching it knowing that that time is coming is a huge issue or a huge difference. 


Heather Sager  16:23

Yeah, this is so fascinating to me, because I think everyone resonates with this idea of these, the phases that you talk about regardless of someone's tracking their cycle or unaware putting language to this. We all feel those highs and lows. And quite frankly, I think and we all joke about this as memes on social media that all those things you described is the journey of the entrepreneur like one day you're on fire, the next day your under a desk crying, sobbing because your launch isn't working. We joke about it, right?

 

Renae Fieck  22:39

Yeah. 


Heather Sager  22:42  

I think we all think it's these either, we're not clear enough, not good enough, not organized enough, not batching enough, not whatever enough, or outgoing enough or introverted or like we all start creating these identities or lack of the right identities with it. But at the end of it, what you just described is something that brings this commonality to all female entrepreneurs. Like we all go through the cycle in a different way which makes sense by the way and I know you know this. I think this is why there is such a big, I'm gonna call a like rumbling revolt, if you will, online in the last, I would say five years or so that women especially coaches and course creators are going look I'm, I'm kind of done learning from the man who not only has more pushy tactics, but I actually think it's more of this, respecting the vibe of how we as women flow, pun intended.


Renae Fieck  24:03  

Yeah, well, there's this big push about being consistent, right, like building and consistently doing the same things over and over and over again. And in a former time, I was in a network marketing company and that was what it was. It was like, do the same thing over and over and over again, just repeat it and I was like, one that sounds freaking boring. Number two, my body doesn't work that way. And number three, there's no amount of doing more that I can do, like there's got to be a better way that there's got to be a better way to increase my productivity, increase my efficiency without burning myself out and just doing more, right, like, and that's when I went into this whole progression of like simplifying and doing less, like what can I do to do less? And this really was the key gateway to being able to do less because it is working with where you're at, rather than that and like I kind of revolt against the idea of consistency because consistency does make you think you have to do the same thing every single day. That's a man thing like a man is like their testosterone repeats almost the same every 24 hours, every single day, like consistency doing the same thing every single day is a man's version and a man's way of living. Women are in this 28 day cycle. And so when we start looking at that, like it might be yes, you show up and work on your business consistently but what you're doing in that is different every single day. 


So not to say like, you can sit back and just not do anything and let it slide but how you show up and what you're doing and what you're focusing on does need to shift based on where your energy and your body's at. And you don't have to, by any means you can go do it however you want to do it but if you do it that way, you're working with your body rather than forcing yourself to do something that just doesn't feel good. And I know women know that, like, there's days when you wake up and you feel like you're just forcing yourself to work out, forcing yourself like days, you know, and you'll probably see it like days when you wake up and you feel like, gosh, it was so easy to get out of bed today, It was so easy to crush my workout, it was so easy to do all these things. And then two weeks later, you hit snooze a million times, you feel like you didn't get enough sleep, and you have no energy in you to actually do a workout. And oftentimes what happens is that women take that on as there's something wrong with them. It's like that, it becomes an identity thing, right? And then you're owning this identity of like you said, I'm just not consistent enough. I just don't, I can't I my habits are, I just can't stay working out every single day, or I don't show up every day, or I'm just not confident on camera or whatever it might be when in reality when you reflect and look at the way your cycle is playing into it, it takes that off of you and that it's not a part of who you are and it's not your willpower. It's not you as a person. This is just how your body's intended to run and then it takes that pressure off and it makes, it's a game that part, like the identity removal piece is a game changer for so many women.


Heather Sager  27:10  

Yes, so how do we figure out what that is, right? Because the cycles make sense but as I mentioned, I don't know if it's common for women or not. But I would imagine not everybody has a 28 days cycle. Yeah. So how do we how do we navigate that, right? And I think, a scenario comes to mind as beautiful as it be if we could be like oh launches get planned in the right window, case in point, I was laughing when I was going through our prep materials for this because my launch. So I'm in launch mode right now at the time of this recording, doors are open. I've been doing a workshop series spanning a few weeks. But my main workshop week hit right on the recharge phase. It's a two hour workshops. During this phase and it's unavoidable at some points because that was not supposed to be my technical week of flow. So how do we navigate that? Like, how does this pan out in the real world for women who do not have a 28 day cycle?


Renae Fieck  28:10  

Yeah, well, most women probably don't, right. And you're going to always have things like even if you do have a predictable cycle, there's always going to be things that happen that throw it off, right, like, you have an extra layer of stress and then your hormones are a little bit off and then your cycles late that month, or, you know you're working out harder or something, like there's always these compounding factors. And so one of the biggest things that I work with the women I work with is helping them really listen to their bodies, right? Learning to tap into and listening to what's going on inside of you because for the most of us, we're being told to listen to all of the other experts, listen to all of what everybody else is saying to do and very rarely do we take that step back and actually listen, like what does my body need? And what do I need right now. And that's checkpoint number one and learning how to do that is can be really powerful in so many different ways. 


So step number one would be really just starting to listen to your cycle and starting to track more than just when you bleed and when you don't, but starting to listen to those more subtle cues of, hey, I had a lot of energy right here, I didn't have a lot of energy here. And looking at that, over the course of a couple of months can sometimes give you insight into just your cycle and what's going on with you. If you have a very erratic cycle. It is all over the board, then sometimes what we can do is start to super impose these rhythms on because oftentimes when your cycles really erratic and really all over the board could mean that your hormones are all out of whack. And so a lot of why our hormones are out of whack  is because a lot of us are in fight or flight all the time, right and so when you're in fight or flight your stress levels are high that shuts off or that cortisol shuts off a lot of the other basic biological functions of your body. And so if your body is sitting there saying run away from a lion, you're gonna die. It's not thinking, how do we reproduce and make a baby, which is basically what your cycle is intended for and so it's gonna throw that all off. So it kind of starts from that top approach of looking at, okay, why is your body functioning like this? If it's super irregular and how do we get it back into a little bit more homeostasis? Like, how do we get it back into this place where it's being a little bit more rhythmical. 


And one way to do that is by shaping and creating that rhythm so that your body starts to learn, okay, we don't have to be stressed out all the time, we don't have to be in this fight or fight all the time, we do have these ebbs and flows, we do have times of rest, we do have times of pushing, but we also have this balance and that can help bring the cycle into a little bit of an alignment. So I have seen that like, this is how it worked with me. I had been postpartum, no cycle at all for a very long time. I started tracking, I actually use the moon which is another way that you can use this strategy and this method when you don't have a cycle at all, if you've had a hysterectomy, or postmenopausal or something of that nature. You can use the moon which has a 28 day cycle as well to help kind of use the same external guide, right? Like, okay, this is where I'm at now. And I was within two months of doing that, that I started having a cycle again postpartum, and had been prior just like you said, like 60 days, 90 days, 100 days, 30 days, 14 days, like really all over the board. And after, when I started using these more behavioral lifestyle rhythms, it became very predictable. Life is gonna throw things like COVID, and the COVID vaccine and all of those other pieces. And this last year, my cycles been off. But I've still been able to tap into those general more bigger, broader categories and the awareness of like, hey, you know what this is where I should be based on my calendar and how I map out my calendar but my body doesn't feel this way. My body feels like this. And so I'm going to lean in and trust into that and go that way. And so there's a little bit of that, like science, but also learning to really listen to your body.


Heather Sager  32:27  

Yes, okay. You just gave us such a beautiful gift and and reflect back what you said, and just how it spoke to me. Side note for just a moment, I know you and I are in programs together that we talk a lot about mindset of a business owner and one of the things that I know we both hold very true is us owning our own realities and creating our own realities and not just letting life happen. We take ownership of it. And yeah, one of the things that I think is really beautiful that you said is how I've operated. I'm imagining a lot of women who you when you first start working with them is we're very much like at the mercy of our cycle. Like it's just oh, it just happens. We have no control over it. It just happens and for me that panned out of being really struggled and frustrated and annoyed when I was trying to get pregnant. It took a really long time and miscarriage and then really long time to get pregnant. And that whole idea it was always said that it's out of my hands, control. And the beautiful gift that you just gave me and thinking about is we can do something about it, whether it's the learning about the moon phases which I know nothing about and probably laugh a little bit because that goes into the woo side of things but I'm open to it. 


I think about the idea of you like trying to schedule out the behavioral thing of going, what can we do to help get our bodies back in sync. And the thing that really clicked was when I reflect back when my cycle was the craziest was when I was at my highest stress in a corporate world, traveling a ton. And I think a lot of people listening are probably in a very similar boat where it was like old life before entrepreneurship, which I would imagine had a lot of stress, a lot of chaos, crazy schedules. But there's this thing that happens as entrepreneurs as we ease into learning and creating space and figuring out how we like to work and what we'd like to do. There's no BS about it. So I've noticed I didn't realize this, but I've noticed that my body has adapted and I'm far more consistent. And I think backwards engineered what you're talking about, but I had no awareness of it. So what a beautiful gift that you just gave that like something as simple as I don't know, I think about the freakout that I'll have happen when it's getting close to my period. And just like oh, it's a bad week. We can't do anything. Well, yeah, we can. I just reflecting that back. I think that's just a beautiful thing that even something like our cycle. We do have influence over and can take some ownership with it and I think that's really empowering.


Renae Fieck  34:49  

Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, your body is smart, right? I had a guest on my podcast and she was talking about the same kind of idea of like, your body adapts, right. So if you woke up every morning, the analogy she gave was like, if you wake up every single morning and you eat first thing in the morning, and then you skip one day, your body is going to be hungry. It's going to tell you like, hey, you forgot to feed me today. But if you are doing something like intermittent fasting or something of that nature, and you don't eat until 11 o'clock in the afternoon, or 12 o'clock in the afternoon, your body is not going to send you a hunger cue at six o'clock in the morning because it's not used to that, right. I actually was just reading a book that was talking about, like our biological rhythms of the day and like circadian rhythms and things like that. And he was very much like it's a genetic thing, like the way we operate and how we function in the day. And I was like, yeah, but I feel like there's so much habit like our bodies are smart, like, yes, there is this genetic component, there is this part of like who we are and how our bodies were naturally wired. But our body's smart, it's kind of figure out a way to make it so that you survive the easiest way as possible. So if you're in this constant state of stress all the time, it's going to try. It's going to shut off digestion, it's going to shut off fertility, it's going to shut off all these other things trying to support you in the best way that it thinks possible. So looking at those habits and those lifestyle things that you're doing as part of why you maybe aren't losing weight, why your cycle cycles way off, why you're not sleeping, why like all of these other layers, like then your body is not in a box, or your businesses in a box, right? Like you can't hustle your way to a business, like burning on Adderall all night long, and expect to feel like you're this amazing person all the time. Like you can't, it's not one or the other, like you have to incorporate all the pieces together.


Heather Sager  36:46  

Yeah. And it starts, as you mentioned, I wrote this down of the idea of just tracking not just when you're bleeding and when you're not. But one of the things I wrote down is managing your like tracking your energy levels, that awareness piece is so so powerful. So let's connect that back into the idea of people listening, have the desire to speak on stages, that have the desire to speak on podcast, do what we're doing, do interviews, get on live streams, whatever that looks like showing up as the face of their business, they can use it as a marketing tool to grow their audience. Can you talk about how we can use our cycle to our advantage and maybe how that can cross section of it?


Renae Fieck  37:16  

Yeah, so all of those types of things you will want to do in that phase right around when you're ovulating. So either before it even like that, that as estrogen is climbing, you will have a lot of more outward energy. But especially at that peak when you're intended to ovulate which there's all kinds of other biological cues you can watch for if you're interested to find out when exactly you're ovulating. If you know you have a predictable cycle, you can use just dates and calendars and things like that too. But those are the cue, that's the key window for when you would want to do that kind of stuff because you're going to feel ready to do that. You're going to feel excited to do that. You're going to feel like I want to show up and do this live even if you're nervous about it even if it's not something you enjoy. It's going to be the most aligned at that point in time. If you're in that reflect and recharge phase, you can force yourself to do it. I've done it plenty of times. I've had to make myself do it when things are off. But if you do it in those phases, you're going to need a lot of extra bumping yourself up before, a lot of like, you know, juice in yourself up like I got to do this, I'm going to do this, it's going to be great, it's going to be wonderful and then you're going to probably need a lot of extra self care after because it's going to drain you much more versus in that phase, like I've had days where I'm doing podcast interviews like this, or trainings or things for like 12 hours straight. And at the end of the day, I still feel okay, because that's where my body is naturally like it's in this high, right? I'm ready to go, when your estrogen is high, you're going to need less sleep, you're going to feel more energetic, you're going to feel more amped and ready to go and so work with that, run with that, ride with that, stack your cards in that way so that when you have that other half of the month and you don't want to be like that you have the space to do that there.


Heather Sager  39:13  

Yes, I love, I love that that distinction and especially that idea, right? There's going to be times where you're going to have to show up and we're not in that window. One of the things that pops to mind for me is something I know a lot of women struggle with is the the hangover of after being on stage. There's a lot of second guessing, a lot of negative talk, a lot of, oh, crap, I missed this, or what did they think. I noticed very distinctly a difference between what I'm in that connection stage versus those other two stages you were talking about. I think, one, just calling out that piece there is if you have a tendency to beat yourself up after you put yourself out there that you said post self-care after, know that in advance. Bake that time into it and you have to pump yourself up on the backside, not just the front side.


Renae Fieck  39:59  

Yeah Yeah, yeah, because you are, it's gonna require so much more of your energy. So knowing that, like you're giving out so much energy when you're at an energy low, you do have to pump yourself up before and you're gonna have to restore yourself after.


Heather Sager  40:15  

Yes. Okay, I love this conversation so much. I want to talk to you about this all day. But we will not do that. We're going to start wrapping up here in a moment. But I know you have a couple recommendations around like just things for business owners. I know you specifically work with business owners on this and you have programs around this of how to design it. What are some of your favorite things that you'd like to share with women to keep in mind when they think about their productivity and their cycle?


Renae Fieck  40:40  

Yeah, I think the biggest thing for me that I, is like the permission to not have to do it all the time. Like, you don't have to, there are going to be times when you do want to take a break and you want to get off and letting yourself feel that way, right? Like even we have the season or like the phases of our month, we have seasons of the year as well like, right, when we start to look at this cyclical rhythm on a bit much bigger, broader scale. We have them in the year as well. So oftentimes, I hear people talking about like boosting up, getting a big bunch of revenue, going hard at the end of the year, trying to hit that last quarter really hard. And then into the new year, everybody's like excited, didn't really that's your fall in winter, right. It's the time of the year when you should be slowing down and recuperating and restoring and recharging. And so really learning to listen and give yourself that permission that you have the opportunity to go against the grain just because everybody else is saying do it one way doesn't necessarily mean that that's the best way. And in fact, as women, we could start setting a new path, like setting a new rhythm. So I think the biggest thing that I would love for women to walk away with is that permission to just own how you feel, trust how you feel, and know that it's okay to lean into that. And in fact, leaning into that might be the most powerful thing you have for your productivity. 


Heather Sager  42:05  

Yes, I love this. If I had to describe this conversation and what we covered today in one word, it would be the word empowering. Like what a beautiful gift this conversation is helping women understand that the whole idea of designing your business, like in a way that feels good, it really is customized. But this just gives another lens to look through that I, just empowering. It's just really, really beautiful. So I'm so grateful for you for being here today, Renae. For other people who are feeling like equally wound up, maybe they're in their connection mode and they were like, yes, we want to do this. Where can people learn more? I know you have a free resource that can help people get started with understanding this, right?


Renae Fieck  42:41  

Yeah, so the podcast is a great place. So you can find us anywhere on podcasts stuff that's out there, podcast place that you listen. It's the Cycle Advantage, so we talk all about how you can use your cycle to your advantage. And then we do have a guide that talks about the three different ways that your cycles impacting your life in business. I'm sure, Heather, you can have linked up in the show notes for that.


Heather Sager  43:04  

I'll link my favorite actors that I listened to and prep for this one today also link a couple those episodes so you all have it so you can binge, all the good things Renae is talking about.


Renae Fieck  43:12  

Yeah, yeah. And then we do have a three day live training that's coming up, where we'll talk about all of these different parts and how you can really start to implement it, integrate it into your life and then also your business, like how you can actually, you know, because part of this is not just how it's impacting your business, but it's impacting the way you interact with your spouse, or your kids or your family, like, everything you do. So we have that piece of how it really impacts your life, and then how you take it to that next level and really empower your business with it. 


Heather Sager  43:42  

I'm so very, very excited about that. I already wrote it on my calendar. We chatted about beforehand. But yeah, I'm in this phase right now in my business that I know my next round of growth isn't more business strategies. It's actually the personal aspects of how I show up in my business. So for example, I'm enrolling in a program all about nutrition next week. I'm excited. I'm going to jump into your program. I want to learn more about this. So I will be a three part workshop series. Y'all grab the link, I'll put it in the show notes here. I'm excited. But I think these are the conversations we need to start having that, yes, we had to think about what do we talk about onstage? What's our messaging? How do we show up in a more magnetic way. But we have to really start understanding ourselves so that we can be at our best on those onstage moments. So, Renae, thank you so much for the gift of being here today. Such a good conversation. Last things you'd like to share? Also, where can people connect with you through social? 


Renae Fieck  44:34  

Yeah, no, I think we hit pretty well today. I'm on most platforms everywhere under Renea Fieck, or on Facebook itt's Rising Moms because that was our community space before. So Renee Fieck or Rising Moms on Instagram is usually the best place to find me. So I sometimes branch out from there, but that's all.


Heather Sager  44:52  

I'll link to both and I'll be tagging her and all this stuff today. But as always, if you all are loving this conversation, whether you came into this conversation thinking, oh, taboo or yes, bring it on. I'm going to encourage you to say, can you take a screenshot of this episode and share what resonated with you and let's start getting these conversations out more mainstream, especially to other women business owners. I think the more we can talk about it, the more dynamically we can grow our business and have fun along the way. Thanks so much for joining today and thanks for listening. We'll see you on the next episode.