The world needs our souls to sing. Together.
Like a huge, enthusiastic, and at times slightly out-of-tune choir, you can’t help but be moved by – a collective of humans unashamedly basking in their own joy and aliveness, united by something that can’t be explained.
It’s from that place that our most alive, world-changing ideas emerge. The ideas deeply needed at this time in human history.
It’s that energy that sources us to voice them – and bring them into reality, even though our knees may be shaking.
Inner work has its place – but it’s the wondrous mystery of art in all its forms, and the divine presence of one another, that awakens and sustains our creative power as women.
The era of the leader as poet (in a choir!) is here – unapologetically embodying her full-spectrum aliveness. Following her highest, wisest, minxiest, sovereign self, and shaping what wants to emerge in service of the world she longs to create.
The seeds of this vision first came to me as a poem, some time ago…
It had been cooking for some decades before that, of course…
You and I are here to bring forward the work our lives has apprenticed us for, rather than learning and adhering to somebody else’s model, however wise or useful that model may be.
Our truest work is born from a weird and wonderful mishmash…Of deep expertise in our craft and/or industry that no longer fits in the way it used to. The heartbreak of that. Strange callings to new modalities seemingly unconnected to anything. Books that make us weep with the relief of being seen. Teachers to whom we felt inexplicably drawn. Regret for abandoning our younger, carefree, creative selves. Impossible questions. Sensitivity we curse, and that at the same time we know is our superpower, and many many moments where something inside us whispered: do this.
Your philosophy, and mine, will continue evolving over a lifetime. This page is my best attempt, at capturing some of the core ideas that sit at the heart of the work I offer, right now.
May they act as pathways, portals, provocations, and practices that help us reclaim our creative power and organise our lives and leadership around what makes us feel most alive.
Some definitions
Here three definitions that feel central to this work:
Highest, wisest, minxiest, sovereign self: My term for describing what is often referred to as soul. I like the term soul, and it also reminds me of church, and church is a place that had me feel a lot of shame as a girl. This alternative feels like a gorgeous reclamation of all parts of us – our essence. Including the minxy parts we may have previously believed were unwelcome. It is my belief that it’s those parts that live in the shadows that hold our greatest gifts (btw, minxy is my favourite word of all time).
Creative Power: When we unleash our creative power, we are active participants in shaping reality, rather than endlessly adapting ourselves to systems, cultures, businesses, and leadership models that were not designed with women in mind. Being in our creative power is something we can inhabit in all parts of our work and life.
Joy-Led®: A way of creating, leading, relating and living rooted in aliveness rather than fear, performance, extraction or self-abandonment.
Joy, in this body of work, is not superficial happiness. It is life-force. A signal that something true, nourishing, creative or deeply alive is wanting to emerge through us.
To be Joy-Led is to trust that what makes us feel more alive is deeply wise.
The shadow side of being Joy-Led®
Being Joy-Led does not mean feeling joyful all the time. Sometimes it feels exhilarating. Sometimes it feels deeply uncomfortable.
Sometimes being Joy-Led looks like dancing barefoot in your kitchen in giant hoop earrings on a Tuesday morning before you lead your new programme. Or taking a walk in nature because you just know that’s where you’ll receive the inspiration to complete the project you feel blocked on. Sometimes it looks like sending the email newsletter while your inner imposter screams:
'‘Who the hell do you think you are?’
Sometimes it looks like choosing deep rest, when the metrics (or your own inner-tyrant) say ‘push harder’. Sometimes it looks like grieving a version of yourself, your work, or your life that no longer fits. Sometimes it looks like trying your best, led by your heart, and disappointing people. Sometimes it looks like feeling deeply alive and deeply afraid at the same time.
This way of working/living/creating does not promise:
– endless ease
– instant clarity
– constant confidence
– freedom from uncertainty or heartbreak
– bypassing grief, rage, tenderness or fear
– becoming endlessly more productive, palatable or successful
– transcendence from our humanness
– a life free from relational complexity
Nor is it about following every impulse or endlessly chasing pleasure.
To be Joy-Led is not to abandon discipline, discernment, responsibility or devotion to our craft. Quite the opposite.
It is to allow aliveness, eros, intuition, creativity and full-spectrum humanness to participate in how we create, lead, organise, relate and live.
It is to stop abandoning ourselves in pursuit of success, approval or belonging.
It is to trust that what feels deeply alive may also ask something enormous of us, that we might not feel ready for.
And perhaps most importantly: it is to remember that we are not meant to do this alone.
The importance of community
One of the greatest lies patriarchal culture teaches us is that we must figure everything out alone before we are worthy of being seen. But creative power expands in one another’s exquisite presence.
Transformation flourishes in spaces where we feel safe enough to bring our contradictions, tenderness, brilliance, uncertainty, weirdness, longing, grief, joy, and unfinished, unpolished becoming.
Something profound happens when women gather in spaces where there is no fixing, performing and competing, but witnessing, truth-telling, experimentation, laughter, creativity, honesty and permission to be gloriously human.
We remember things in spaces like this that are very difficult to remember alone.
We remember:
– that our sensitivity is power
– that our longings are divine breadcrumbs
– that our ideas hold a life-force all of their own
– that our joy is intelligent and unlimited
– that our bodies hold wisdom no amount of ‘trying to figure it out’ could uncover
– that our creative power expands when it is welcomed, reflected and encouraged by others
Curating spaces and community where women can experiment, create, tell the truth of their experience, support one another and remember who they are is at the centre of this work.
The Joy-Led® Business Creation Cycle
The Joy-Led® Business Creation Cycle emerged from more than a decade of embodied experience taking my own work into the world as a business owner, and the past five years supporting other women create, lead and offer their work from this more alive, relational place alongside my leadership development work.
It is an evolving frame, which summarises the creative process I believe we are always in as Joy-Led business owners, leaders, creators, and changemakers.
The Context
We are told, constantly: You need the right niche. The right messaging. The right funnel. The right expert. And if you just invest in the next programme, the next formula, the next system…Then things will finally work.
But it rarely works that way. I know that. You know that. That’s why I’m writing this, and you’re here reading it.
I also know our resistance to this bullshit extractive cycle is divine data. It is the part of us that is done contorting ourselves, calling us forward to what’s next:
A way that honours our creative power, and leadership, rather than subjugating it to some external authority.
Introducing The Joy-Led™ Business Creation Cycle
The Joy-Led™ Business Creation Cycle
The way out of the extractive cycle, involves structure.
Not the ultimate blueprint, five-step hack, this-is-the-only-way-to-do-it kind of structure.
But the best kind. The liberating kind. The non-linear kind we make our own, that’s like a trellis around which our highest work can bloom! The kind that invites us to trust, expand and embody our creative power as women in service of the work we're here to do. That’s what The Joy-Led Business Creation Cycle provides.
It holds us as we bring our work into the world. It supports us understand where we are in the creative process, where we might be stuck, how we can meet resistance head on and dance through it with more grace and ease.
It helps our ideas live out in the world as actual offerings, and movements, and products and art. It supports us make our truest, scariest, most radical ideas possible, at a pace we are able to sustain, while expanding our capacity to hold it all in the process.
Its six stages provide a map, that we’re always on as Joy-Led business owners. Sometimes in sequence, most times not.
Commune – choosing to create from soul/intuition/higher guidance/what we sense is needed, even if no one is asking for it directly
Witness – being seen and heard by trusted companions as our ideas and work begin to take form
Create – bringing new offerings, experiences and ideas to life. Giving our ideas shape and context that lands with our people
Invite / Offer – sharing what is emerging and welcoming people into it, before we feel entirely ‘ready’
Lead / Embody – holding space for others through the work we are here to do in ways that make us, and them, feel more alive
Become – Integration: allowing the creative process to shape who we are as leaders and changemakers, again and again
Holding it all, at the centre, is our life-force, our joy, our sense of aliveness. Sometimes known as Eros.
Yes, Eros.
Rather than overriding ourselves and adhering to rigid strategies, this cycle invites us to dance with the natural creative process. It invites us to honour our divinity and humanness along the way.
We create offerings that feel more alive, more authentic, and more deeply aligned with our people and the bigger mission we’re here to serve.
We’re able to invite people into those offerings from a place of deep joy. We have that feeling: this is what I’m here for.
The work our soul is calling us to do lands with relevance and resonance, in ways people can and can’t logically explain.
We feel more and more alive as we and our work can meet people, right where they are, and support them create the transformation they seek in the context of their lives and work.
Teachers, guides and fellow travellers
These are some of the teachers, guides and bodies of work that have been part of this Joy-Led philosophy’s emergence, alongside more than a decade of client work and fifteen years of leadership experience before that:
The Co-Active Training Institute (CTI)
My professional coach training with CTI in 2016-17 transformed how I understood leadership, transformation and human potential. Their belief that people are naturally creative, resourceful and whole remains woven through everything I offer today.
CTI also introduced me to extraordinary teachers and coaches, including Susannah Southgate and Mary Beth Shewan. Through their guidance and example, they gave me permission to trust myself more deeply. Much of what this body of work has become grew from that permission.
My study of Adult Development Theory and my training as a Leadership Circle® Practitioner showed me that every part of us is a gift, and that the parts relegated to the shadows often carry the wisdom, creativity and aliveness we most need.
Kellita Maloof – Creator of Showgirl Awakening
Kellita’s work and philosophy have profoundly shaped my own leadership journey, my relationship with creativity, and the evolution of this Joy-Led body of work.
My work with her transformed my relationship with visibility, embodied leadership and creative expression. That transformation has flowed into everything I offer – and who I am as I offer it.
Tad Hargrave – Marketing for Hippies
Tad’s body of work, and deep support, led to me first discovering that marketing our work can feel joyful. He also introduced me to an amazing community of women, who were a beautiful support as this Joy-Led body of work was seeded.
Jeffrey Van Dyk and the EdgeRiders community of changemakers
Jeffrey’s support and wisdom, alongside my fellow EdgeRiders, have been integral to this Joy-Led work finding ever fuller expression in the world.