The Sheila Botelho Show: Business Strategy and the Inner Work of Leadership
The Sheila Botelho Show is a business and leadership podcast for founders, CEOs, and women leading at the highest level of their work, who are ready to build the next decade of their business with more clarity, more profit, and more of themselves in the room.
You’ve already done the hard part. You’ve built something that works. You’ve hit the goals that looked impressive from the outside. And somewhere along the way, you started wondering what it would feel like to grow without trading pieces of yourself for the next milestone.
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Every week, Sheila pulls up a chair for the kind of conversations you’d have with a trusted friend who’s spent decades growing businesses through wave after wave of change, reading rooms, and helping people come home to themselves no matter how fast the landscape moves.
You’ll hear about business strategy, leadership, profit, scaling, identity, creativity, and the shifting landscape of entrepreneurship in a season where everything is changing at once. Solo chats, minisodes, and conversations with founders and leaders building businesses with depth and integrity. Real talk for the woman who’s done the surface-level work and is ready for something with more substance.
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The Sheila Botelho Show: Business Strategy and the Inner Work of Leadership
What Happens When You Create Space | EP 541
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What if the growth you’re chasing actually arrives when you stop chasing it?
In this episode of The Sheila Botelho Show, I share the personal story of how creating space earlier this year led to healing, clarity, and unexpected opportunities. From daily walks that became sacred processing time to the clients who mirror my own journey of releasing over-functioning, this conversation explores the emotional and spiritual layers of stillness.
You’ll hear why trusting the quiet, even when it feels uncertain, can be the most productive decision you ever make. And how honoring your body, intuition, and inner rhythm can open the doorway to your next aligned season.
✍️ Sheila's Notes - The reflections I write only here. For your Expansion Season.
🧭 Your Vision Map - Name what you are building before you build it.
💎 Work With Me - Choose the most aligned pathway for your business.
Choosing Quiet Over Noise
SheilaYou don't realize how loud it's been until you step into the quiet. Earlier this year, I made a decision to create space because I could feel something inside whispering that I couldn't hear over all the noise. I didn't fully know what would fill that space, and honestly, that was the point. But what I discovered when I slowed down was clarity, alignment, and a deeper trust of where life was guiding me next. Hi, welcome to the podcast. I'm Sheila Botelho, and I believe true success is built from the inside out. Today I'm sharing a story that is still unfolding for me that began when I realized that I needed to create space in my life. And I'm not talking about space to create another strategy or system or another plan to squeeze more productivity out of my day. I truly just wanted to create space. So if you've ever felt the pull between doing and being, this conversation is one that I hope you find some value in.
The Whisper To Create Space
SheilaThere was this morning earlier this year when I woke up and my first thought was, I'm tired and the day hasn't even started yet. This actually reminded me of when I had newborns. That feeling of, oh boy, maybe I get to nap later. The difference was there was no space for napping at this point in my life. And while I have felt myself edging toward burnout in the past, that's not what this was, because fortunately I've put into place beautiful practices to help me never get to that place. This was more like my body and my spirit were quietly raising their hand saying, hello, remember us. And that's the thing about teaching self-care for business. You may know the tools, you may know the patterns really well and create like incredible frameworks and structures and help people get great results. And still, life finds a way to test your devotion to what you teach. You may find this in your own work. It's so interesting. It's like my hairdresser, who I love so much, she is like, please, to anyone in her family, please do not ask me to cut your hair. Right? It's it's like you want to have a separation from it at times. But then sometimes you forget that, oh, maybe I'm not always gonna get this right because hey, we're human. So there's so much grace for us to have on ourselves when those things happen. So for me, this started as a whisper. You know, those little nudges when you just you're in the middle of doing something and you're like, ooh, it's like a little soul hit. Well, for me, this would happen during my morning walks. And they were saying things like, you don't need to be everywhere and you don't need to prove anything. But the more that I ignored them, the louder they became. And I don't know if this has happened to you before, but soon it wasn't just the little nudges and the little voices in my mind. My body decided to join the conversation.
Mold, Midlife, And Body Signals
SheilaNow, this wasn't something that I had created for myself. It was something that I had been exposed to, which was mold. I've mentioned on some previous episodes that I uncovered some mold in my body. Uh, I think it was June of this year. I actually had the testing done. And being at the age that I'm at, being 53, um, I realized, well, you know, hormones are shifting. This is all part of it, right? So I thought, oh, brain fog, all this kind of stuff. It's just part of it. I'll figure it out. But what I didn't realize was mold sensitivity can actually really mimic a lot of things that you would experience with traditional, just menopausal type of symptoms. And so my body was trying to send me a series of memos that I no longer could delete. Because for years I'd been pushing through thinking, this is just midlife. This is just what 50 something feels like. But my intuition knew better. And I realized that exhaustion wasn't something that I could look at as a weakness for myself. It truly was information. My body was telling me I needed to pay close attention to something. And I love the book When the Body Keeps the Score. Go look it up. It's incredible. And then, of course, there's Gabor Mate's book, When the Body Says No. It's so interesting, the connection with our body and our mind and our intuition. Very, very important. So those walks that I started to take, of course, I've always loved to take my walks, but I have I've approached them differently.
Walking As Ritual And Listening
SheilaI started walking as a ritual. It wasn't power walking or checking my step count. In fact, I've done that a few times. I'm like, okay, good. I know how many minutes I need to walk to get a certain number. If I have a step counter on me, I get a little obsessive about it and I start celebrating. Wow, I did this many steps, and then I have to do more. And then I'm constantly checking, and it just, it's not good for my mental health. So I just stopped doing that. And instead, I'm like, I go by amount of time. And sometimes I move faster and sometimes I move slower, and it's all good. So in this case, these walks, this ritual, it became walking to listen. Listen to what was coming up in my intuition and also listening to my body. Like, how was it feeling? That's how our body talks to us. What am I feeling? Do I feel pain anywhere? Do I feel expansiveness somewhere? Do I feel really flexible right now? Do I feel tired? What's happening? And those walks became my CEO soul meetings. I called them my CEO soul walks, really, but they were meetings with myself. Sometimes I'd cry. Sometimes I'd pray. Actually, every day I'd pray. Because there's always something to pray for. Sometimes I just breathe and let my thoughts wander far enough to find some truth again. Because this is the human experience. And if we're not occasionally crying, if we're not allowing ourselves to breathe, like, are we really living? Somehow along the line, we started to look at ourselves as really super productive robots. And we are not. We are human. So the sidewalk became my journal. And I noticed how once I slowed down enough to hear the whispers, ideas began landing. Small ones that were really clear and grounded. They were not the frantic should thoughts that came from comparison or urgency, like what was happening up until that point in my walks, but they were ideas that felt alive to me. Stillness is the space where the aligned ideas that are waiting for you in your mind land. And it's funny, the more I trusted those walks, the more synchronicities started showing up. I'd see, of course, it all starts with angel numbers. I'd see repeating numbers. I'd hear song lyrics that felt like answers or sometimes literal lines in a song that I would have just said to myself. And then the song came
Synchronicity And Receiving
Sheilaon the radio if I happened to be driving. Clients would reach out at the exact right moment. And some people might call that coincidence. And yes, I like to look for patterns, but I really call it connection. I call it serendipity. And the connection of this kind will only reveal itself when you're available to receive it and when you have space to receive it. So creating space was not glamorous, I must say. It looked like unsubscribing, which I never like doing because the people who I'm subscribed to on email lists, I absolutely truly, genuinely enjoy and love. But I realized I needed to unsubscribe for a season. So I kept my list of things to resubscribe to once I come through this. And it looked like saying no to invitations that didn't align with me. It also looked like longer stretches of quiet in my calendar. And at first, I thought I'd feel lazy and I thought I'd feel guilty. But instead, you know what happened? I felt so peaceful. Like my nervous system finally took a big exhale. And physically, I started feeling lighter. My joints weren't as stiff, my thoughts weren't as sticky, my skin looked brighter, I was sleeping better. And yes, I had finally in that space, guess what I did? I actually reached out to my naturopath and said, Hey, let's do all the tests. Let's see what's going on. That's when I discovered the mold.
Unsubscribing And Saying No
SheilaSo isn't it interesting what happens? Would I have had the time? My calendar was so full to be able to do all of these tests and go to do blood work, which I, you know, I don't love doing, but at times if there's a necessity to do it, I wouldn't have had the space. But emotionally, it was like someone clearing cleaned the windows. Um, you know, if you're looking out of a window and it's all got fingerprints on it, it's like someone cleaned those windows. And they were the windows, though, in between me and my intuition and in relation to my business. The part that surprised me was that I didn't lose momentum. I actually became more magnetic. And opportunities I'd been chasing for months suddenly appeared without effort. Because this has happened time and time again for me. And I wish I would remember it more often, but I've noticed that space creates awareness and awareness attracts alignment. Because the awareness is I'm aware of what I want. I'm clear on it. And when you're clear on it, you become magnetic for those aligned opportunities. That's like it's pretty simple. It seems like a principle of the universe to me, because I've seen it happen time and again. And I see the same thing happening with my clients. They decide to create space. Maybe they stop offering something that's run its course, or they take a few weeks off of their content calendar. And at first they feel free, and then suddenly they feel completely panicked. They start to wonder, oh my gosh, should I just you lose my edge? I lost all these views, things are going down in the algorithm. And what most
Space, Awareness, And Magnetism
Sheilaof them do next is what I used to do. They try to fill that space. And here's what they fill it with they start researching what everyone else is doing. Have you been there? Do you do this? They scroll endlessly, they sign up for new courses, and they start tinkering with their offers. Like they don't just do one thing, they do all of the things. It's like they are literally doing a complete makeover of their entire business model. Tell me, how much energy do you think that takes when you should be really resting? If you've decided to take this space, your body's telling you, maybe even your business is telling you, take a little space to rest. And yet, especially in this time we find ourselves in in the world, it is such a human reflex to just rush in and refill what has been cleared out. But here is what I have noticed time and again: that void that you feel in your calendar, in your busyness, it's part of the process. And it is, of course, supposed to feel uncomfortable because it's new. If you've been in the online space for as long as I have, if you've been in it for five years, ten years, like more than that, you know what I'm talking about. It is relentless, it never stops. There's always something new, always something to learn, uh, a new way of doing a new trend. And you see everyone hopping on all the new trends. Oh, this is the music to use. Oh, this is the dance to use. And it's like, oh, should I be doing all of the things? And well, really, can we do all of the things? We can try, but is it really in our best interest? And most importantly, if you are in a service-based
Resisting The Urge To Refill
Sheilabusiness, is it in the best interest of your clients? What they need is a solid base to be able to help them with the various challenges and growth opportunities that are in their life. That void being part of the process. Yeah, that new discomfort. I just want you to know what I will tell clients. I'm going to tell you, you are not lost. You are just unnumbed because that is what happens when we are on this treadmill of the content creation and the trends and all the things. And yes, we have to have our SOPs and all those things. Like, yeah, systems and structure, so, so important. That is what helps a business thrive. However, being in constant motion like that, you start to become numb to it. It's kind of like getting in your car and leaving wherever you're parked. And then all of a sudden you park wherever you your destination was. And you're like, whoa, how did I get here? It's that automatic. Because when you're used to constant motion, being still can feel like confusion. But I want to remind you, you're not feeling confusion truly. What you are doing and your body, your mind, everything is doing, it is recalibrating. You are in recalibration mode. And when I coach women through this, we focus on embodied space holding rather than mental problem solving. Yes, we talk about the mental stuff first. Like, okay, well, what are you thinking? Where do you want to go? All that. Yes, we get that vision and everything, which is what my vision map is all about. And then, of course, we move into the legacy framework. But in there, as all of that stuff is becoming clear, we are doing embodied space holding. We are walking. I'm inviting people to ground in nature,
Discomfort, Recalibration, Not Lost
Sheilato sleep more than you've ever slept, to be in nature longer, to do some gentle movement, to journal voice note. These are simple sensory things that remind your body that it's safe to rest, because the mind cannot integrate what the body doesn't feel safe to hold. Let me say that again. The mind cannot integrate what the body doesn't feel safe to hold. Because in that pause, like when you're in pause mode, something starts to happen. Your body starts to remember what peace feels like. And hopefully at some point in your life, you have felt peace. Not everyone had a peaceful childhood. So I want to just say if that, if that's you, I hold my hold you my heart. For me personally, I had I had some struggles in my childhood. My father had mental health stuff going on, but I do remember really long pockets of peace. I spent a lot of time in nature. And when things were good, they felt really good. So hopefully you've had you can recall a time where you felt true peace in your life. And your body will remember that when you give it space to. And then what also happens is your creative brain, like the next phase is your creative brain starts whispering to you again. And the ideas that come through are not random ideas, they're truly there for you and they're more refined than if you were just looking at someone else's stuff and comparing and saying, Oh, yeah, that's what that looks good. I'll do what they're doing. And I'm not saying never look around. Obviously, we do our comparative research. You know, we do that with our team. We we look at it, it's very important. But you got to start with yourself, right? And you begin to notice who you actually miss and who you don't. When you have the space from all of the connection you've had, you start to see this. What you actually want to create becomes
Embodied Space Holding Practices
Sheilaclear. And what you were only creating because you thought you should create also becomes clear. That is the alchemy of space. Stillness is not emptiness. Stillness is potency waiting to be claimed. And when you allow that space to exist without rushing to fill it, you begin to notice that life keeps moving even when you do not. The world keeps spinning. I mean, yes, thank God, the world keeps spinning. And when it's spinning, you can rest and still be in motion with life. I really want you to think of yourself like a tree. Okay, I just love my trees. I know I talk about them a lot. My maple tree is beautiful golden yellow. My oak tree is like a burnt orange, moving into my favorite color, copper. Right now, it'll be the last one to lose its leaves. And guess what? They're gonna lose their leaves. They're gonna lose like what is kind of like the hair on a tree, you know, our golden crown of hair of hair that we love as women. Um, it they're losing their leaves. They're splendor. It's falling to the earth. And then they're gonna be dormant, except for the root structure, obviously, through the winter for a whole three months. Are they stressing out? I mean, I don't know. I saw a comedian joking about leaves falling, and it was hilarious. Like, we're gonna make it, we're gonna stay on it. Oh no, their friend flew away into the wind, right? So let's kind of take a uh take a piece uh of in advice from nature and let's be like trees and not be afraid to rest. I mean, they just stand there. There's still a little bit going on in the root system. I'm not saying we all just like shut everything down over the winter. I'm just saying, like, we can take space, we can choose our season to rest, whether that season is a few days or a week or a month or longer. Now, here's the beautiful twist. When you have truly honored that quiet space, re-entry feels different. You no longer want to fill every slot in your calendar. You become selective, intuitive, and strategic even without trying. You move from forcing everything to being in a state of flow.
Peace, Memory, And Creativity
SheilaAnd that is what happened for me. When we started preparing for our move, everything unfolded with so much ease from finding the right space to the timing to the people who showed up to help. Oh my goodness, the helpers. One in particular, my dear, dear friend, who's very modest, but was so incredibly helpful and continues to be. And you know what happened too? My health mirrored it. I started sleeping even better. My body started feeling strong again, my mind clearer than ever. And my energy, much to the chagrin of my husband, because I'm very, very energetic when I'm energetic.
SpeakerAnd so it's like, hey, welcome home. How are you doing? You know, it's like, oh boy, it can be a lot.
SheilaBut it turned, it returned in waves for me that felt really grounded, though. It was not frantic energy, it was excited, joyful, joyful life energy. So I'm here to say space creates order, and order in your life creates freedom. Here's something I've noticed after coaching hundreds of women through this, and men too, actually, maybe not hundreds of men, but a good number of men. We repeat the cycle of fullness because it's familiar. And even people like us, you and I, are conditioned to equate worth with output. We'd love to think that we've totally left that at the curb, but it's still part of our DNA. And releasing that takes some time. We say we want peace, but we schedule over it. We crave flow, but we still chase it. And every few months, life gives us another invitation to stop spinning. It's like a gentle nudge from your higher self saying, hey, remember who you are when you're not performing. And sometimes we listen, and doesn't that feel good? And sometimes we don't. Either way, the less lesson that we learn or are meant to learn is just waiting patiently until we do. Your next season does not arrive when you push harder, it arrives when you stop spinning out.
The Alchemy Of Stillness
SheilaSo, how do you start trusting those whispers when everything around you says keep going? What you do is you practice noticing. Notice the moments your body says no. Notice when you feel that slight pull toward rest, but you override it. And notice the tension in your jaw when you're pretending to be just fine. Trust begins in noticing. The more you acknowledge the whisper, the louder it gets. The louder it gets, the less you'll need to search for clarity because clarity will start finding you. That is how alignment works. It's not something that shouts. It truly is an invitation. It invites you in. And you cannot hear it if your life is filled with noise. If you're standing at the edge of the season of slowing down or letting go, here's what I want you to know. It takes as long as it takes. Your timeline is not a delay, it is your design, specifically for you. Do not compare your rhythm to anyone else's highlight reel. Every season serves a purpose, even the slow ones, even the silent ones, even the ones that make no logical sense. When I lost people I loved, my sister, my parents from 2013 to 2020, grief taught me patience in a way business never could. There is no rushing grief. My goodness, it still comes up, right? When we love what we love and we love who we love, the grief is there. It's part of it. There's also no rushing growth. Both require surrender. So if you find yourself in that in-between, not knowing what's next, don't try to fix it. Let yourself feel it and let it be your teacher. If you allow space long enough, here's what you'll start to notice. You'll sleep deeply. You'll crave simplicity, you'll care less about metrics and more about meaning, and you'll start creating from inspiration instead of obligation. And when that happens, your business won't shrink. It will evolve
Nature’s Lesson: Be Like Trees
Sheilabecause clients feel your energy. They can sense when you're grounded. They can sense also when you're forcing. When you show up rested, you become magnetic. That's the paradox of creating in this space. Doing less becomes the catalyst for more impact. How is this landing for you? If this resonates for you, this whole conversation, and if you're craving structure that honors your seasons instead of fighting them, that is exactly what we explore in the vision map and the legacy framework. These are designed to give you specific frameworks that keep you steady during pivots, during expansion, and everything in between, so you can scale without losing yourself. You'll learn how to listen to your body as much as your business metrics. You'll redefine productivity in a way that feels peaceful and powerful at the same time. And if that sounds like the next step that you've been sensing, you'll find all the details in the show notes. If there's one thing to remember, it's this stillness isn't the opposite of success. It is the foundation of it. Creating space doesn't pull you off your path, it actually clears it for you. And when you honor the whispers in your soul, life has a way of meeting you with the next aligned step right on time. Thank you for listening. I'm wishing you all the best, and I look forward to seeing you on another episode.