Louise Allen spent over a decade in her career without telling a single coworker she'd played professional tennis. Eleven years on tour. Every Grand Slam. Ranked as high as No. 70 in the world. She kept it quiet because she was afraid of one label: the aggressive female athlete.

This week on Not All Business, Louise — now Chief Product Officer at Planview — joins Blakely and Heather to talk about why authenticity still feels risky at work, the double bind women face between being likable and being taken seriously, and the moment with a former boss she still thinks about decades later.

Key Takeaways:

• Why Hiding Parts of Yourself at Work Costs More Than It Protects

• The Seating Trick That Gets You Noticed in Any Meeting

• How to Tell If Feedback Is About Your Work or Just Your Personality

• What to Say When Someone Asks a Question They Have No Right to Ask

• Why Finding Your Voice Is a Skill You Can Practice, Not a Trait You're Born With

  
  

Please consider sharing this episode & subscribing to the show for more unfiltered conversations about leadership, growth, and the messy human side of business.

Follow Louise:

• Louise on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louise-k-allen-5703861/

• Louise's writing on Inc. Magazine: https://www.inc.com/author/louise-allen

• Planview: https://www.planview.com/company/leadership/

  
  

Links & Mentions:

• EY Women Athletes Business Network study on female executives and sports (via CNBC): https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/11/want-to-be-a-ceo-later-play-sports-now.html

  
  

Submit Your Sticky Situations:

• Got a sticky situation for Not All Business? Send a voice recording to podcast@notallbusiness.com or drop your question in the comments.

  
  

Thank You to Our Sponsors:

• Face Five Acne Clinic, Root-Cause Acne Care, No Harsh Prescriptions Required: https://facefiveacne.com - code NOTALLBIZ10 for 10% off your first order

• Follow Face Five Skincare: https://www.instagram.com/facefiveskincare/

• Follow Wellness with Yuki: https://www.instagram.com/wellnesswithyuki/

  
  

Not All Business is Sex Ed for Your Career — the honest questions women want answered but rarely ask out loud. Hosted by Heather Cooper and Blakely Graham, alongside producer and co-host Clay Carnill, new episodes drop every Thursday covering the real stuff: workplace drama, salary negotiation, imposter syndrome, and the sticky situations nobody has a script for. Subscribe so you never miss the next one.

Dr. Molly Ware is a cardiologist at Boulder Heart, and she's used to being one of very few women in the room. Nineteen years ago, she was the first woman in her practice group, and when she asked to work part time after having her first child, no one had ever made that request before. This week she tells us what that negotiation taught her, and why the data suggests female doctors may actually get better patient outcomes.

Then we turn it into a virtual exam room. Molly takes rapid fire questions on the health topics we all wonder about and rarely ask out loud: whether wine is actually heart healthy, whether energy drinks deserve their bad reputation, why most people should be getting a lot more exercise than they think, and the genetic cholesterol test almost nobody has heard of but everyone should ask their doctor about.

Key Takeaways:

• Why the data suggests female physicians may get better patient outcomes, and what listening has to do with it

• What changed when Molly became the first woman in her practice to ask for part-time hours

• How to actually tell the difference between indigestion and a heart symptom worth taking seriously

• Whether wine is heart healthy, or whether we just wanted that to be true

• The genetic cholesterol test almost no one gets tested for, and why your family should know their numbers too

• Why "exercise is the best medicine" isn't just a saying, according to a cardiologist

  
  

Please consider sharing this episode and subscribing to the show for more unfiltered conversations about career, health, and the messy human side of both.

Follow Dr. Ware:

• Dr. Ware on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/molly-ware-32353734/

• Boulder Heart (Boulder Community Health): https://www.bch.org/our-services/cardiology/

  
  

Links & Mentions:

• OpenEvidence (AI medical search tool Molly referenced): https://www.openevidence.com/

  
  

Submit Your Sticky Situations & Workplace Dilemmas:

• Got a sticky situation for Not All Business? Send a voice recording to podcast@notallbusiness.com or drop your question in the comments.

  
  

Thank You to Our Sponsors:

• Face Five Acne Clinic, Root-Cause Acne Care, No Harsh Prescriptions Required: https://facefiveacne.com - code NOTALLBIZ10 for 10% off your first order

• Follow Face Five Skincare: https://www.instagram.com/facefiveskincare/

• Follow Wellness with Yuki: https://www.instagram.com/wellnesswithyuki/

  
  

Not All Business is Sex Ed for Your Career — the honest questions women want answered but rarely ask out loud. Hosted by Heather Cooper and Blakely Graham, alongside producer and co-host Clay Carnill, new episodes drop every Thursday covering the real stuff: workplace drama, salary negotiation, imposter syndrome, and the sticky situations nobody has a script for. Subscribe so you never miss the next one.

Kathryn O'Day, Partner at Atlanta Ventures, spent five years building a personal brand in an industry that didn't expect her to. This week she tells us how she found a lane nobody else in venture capital was standing in, why she still doesn't love the spotlight, and what changed when she stopped trying to be everywhere.

The conversation moves into the harder stuff too: the guilt that comes with being a working mom, the "default parent" dynamic in her own marriage, and a language lesson about guilt that reframed the whole conversation. Plus, an in-person recording in a 100-degree studio, a basement that recently hosted a hundred-person punk show, and skincare secrets courtesy of a wedding in Austin.

Key Takeaways:

• How Kathryn found the one lane in venture capital nobody else was filling, and built a personal brand around it

• Why "I just started" beats a perfect content strategy

• The default parent dynamic, and how to actually talk about it before resentment builds

• A trick for resetting the division of labor at home once a year, and what it revealed

• The reason a language lesson about guilt changed how we think about mom guilt

• How to know your partner is overwhelmed, and what to do about it before you both are

  
  

Please consider sharing this episode and subscribing to the show for more unfiltered conversations about career, motherhood, and the messy human side of both.

Follow Kathryn:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathrynoday/

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kathrynoday/

• Substack: https://kathrynoday.substack.com/

  
  

Links & Mentions:

• Jake Suchkowski (Heather's son, music producer and snowboarder): @the_board_man_

• Elden Graham (Blakely's son): @e_geaham

• Anthrapology (Elden's band): @anthrapologyband

• Face Five Skincare: https://www.instagram.com/facefiveskincare/ or https://www.tiktok.com/@facefiveskincare

• Face Five Skincare Glow Getter masks: https://facefiveskincare.com/product/glow-getter/

• Wellness with Yuki: https://www.instagram.com/wellnesswithyuki/

• Clay's skincare routine: Casual Friday 06.26.26

  
  

Submit Your Sticky Situations & Workplace Dilemmas:

• Got a sticky situation for Not All Business? Send a voice recording to podcast@notallbusiness.com or drop your question in the comments.

  
  

Thank You to Our Sponsors:

• We’re on Substack! Join us at Not All Business on Substack for full episodes, Unfiltered After Shows, and everything else we're building. https://notallbusiness.substack.com/

  
  

Not All Business is Sex Ed for Your Career — the honest questions women want answered but rarely ask out loud. Hosted by Heather Cooper and Blakely Graham, alongside producer and co-host Clay Carnill, new episodes drop every Thursday covering the real stuff: workplace drama, salary negotiation, imposter syndrome, and the sticky situations nobody has a script for. Subscribe so you never miss the next one.