THE episode for anyone sitting on an offer they're too scared to bring back to life!!!

What if the six-figure business you're looking for isn't a brand new offer, but the one you already have, relaunched? In this episode, Carly Valancy and I get into how she took one old, burnt-out offer, THE ICONIC Reach Out Party, and deepened it into a business that tripled her income in six months, built a 500-person waitlist, and moved her family to Spain. All in a single year.

We go deep on the three energies of business and why deepening is the hardest and the most powerful, how to relaunch an offer by changing the delivery and not the bones, growing on Substack from scratch, posting with congruence instead of chasing virality, and the nervous system practices that took her from frozen with fear to fully booked. If she did it, so can you.

We dive into

○ The three energies of business: creation, destruction, and deepening (and why deepening is the hardest, and the one that actually builds a universe)
○ How Carly relaunched a dead offer by changing the delivery, not the bones
○ From one scared application to a 500-person waitlist, the HOW
○ Why depth beats reach, and why your content quality decides who you call in
○ Congruence: how to post in a way that actually feels like you
○ How she books five-figure keynotes with a small following
○ The nervous system practices that got her out of the freeze
○ How to actually grow on Substack from zero

Red threads

○ You probably don't need a new offer. You need to deepen the one you already have. If the bones are good and people resonate, change the delivery, not the whole thing.
○ The byproduct is the point. A goal like "move to Spain" forces every other part of the business to come alive to make it possible.
○ Depth over reach. Volume is not the same as depth, and who you call in is a direct reflection of how deep your content goes.
○ Post with congruence: the smallest possible gap between how you present and how you actually are. If it's not congruent, you won't do it, and you shouldn't.
○ The work doesn't get easier. You get braver. What a relaunch costs isn't more work, it's more courage.
○ Say the scary vision out loud in a room that will hold you to it. The release, and the accountability, is where it starts becoming real.
○ Your nervous system is the business. Meditation, tapping, and rest aren't the bonus, they're the work.

References and rabbit holes

○ Carly Valancy and her offer, Reach Out Party (reaching out to one person a day for 100 days)
○ The three energies: creation, destruction, and deepening / regeneration
○ Congruence, from psychologist Carl Rogers
○ Anne-Laure Le Cunff and her work on the neuroscience of goals (Carly's upcoming Substack live with her)
○ EFT tapping, and Johnny Miller's 15-minute NSDR practice
○ The creative process as three departments: the creator, the editor, and the publisher (a Creative Living framework by Lois McKenzie)
○ My previous episode, How to Scale One Offer to the Moon with Alexa Martinez

Links

○ Carly Valancy, Reach Out Party
○ Carly on Substack
○ Previous episode: How to Scale One Offer to the Moon with Alexa Martinez →

Reminder!

○ Expansion, my mastermind (doors open MID NOVEMBER!! join the waitlist)

Journal prompt

What is the offer you already have, the one with good bones, that you've been tempted to abandon because the way you were running it burnt you out?

What would it look like to keep the heart of it and change only the delivery? And what would you have to be brave enough to say out loud, in a room, to actually bring it back to life?

THEEEE relationship episode you've been asking me for!!! Can you be deeply in love with someone and still not really know them? In this episode, relationship therapist Amy June of The Softening and I get into the difference between love and intimacy, why safety has to come before vulnerability, and why you can't actually balance love, intimacy, and creativity.

We go deep on the nervous system of closeness, treating your creativity like a lover instead of a to-do list, why trying to split yourself leaves you at 75% everywhere, and the center of gravity that lets you give each thing all of you. Plus desire vs safety, parasocial relationships, and whether intimacy actually has a limit.

If you're a creative person trying to hold a relationship, your art, and yourself all at once, this one is for you.

We dive into

○ Why love and intimacy are not the same thing

○ The chain nobody teaches you: safety comes before vulnerability, vulnerability comes before intimacy

○ Why you can't balance love and creativity, and what to do instead

○ Treating your creativity like a relationship, not a task

○ The "center of gravity" that lets you swing fully into one thing without losing yourself

○ Codependence vs interdependence, with your art and with people

○ Why intimacy isn't measured in time

○ Desire thrives on mystery, intimacy thrives on safety

○ Parasocial relationships and the ethics of building closeness online

Red threads

○ You don't balance love and creativity. You expand your capacity to hold both, and you swing fully into each in turn.

○ Both love and creativity ask for your full presence. Split yourself, and you're only 75% in each place.

○ You can only swing all the way to one side if you have a center of gravity to come back to.

○ Safety is the precursor to vulnerability, and vulnerability is the precursor to intimacy.

○ Intimacy isn't measured in time. Depth is. You can see someone twice a year and be closer than people who talk daily.

○ You can be madly in love with someone and have almost no intimacy. They're not the same thing.

○ Desire thrives on mystery. Intimacy thrives on safety. The art is weaving them together.

○ Stop seeing your intimacy, your rest, and your creativity as a scarce currency you have to spend carefully.

References and rabbit holes

○ Esther Perel, and her book Mating in Captivity

○ Somatic experiencing: pendulation and titration (how we expand capacity)

○ Polyvagal theory and the nervous system of safety

○ Codependence, enmeshment, and interdependence (from family systems theory)

○ The research that it takes roughly 50 hours together to turn an acquaintance into a friend

Links

○ Amy June: The Softening on Substack

○ Amy June: The Softening on Instagram

○ Expansion, my mastermind (doors open soon, join the waitlist)

Journal prompt

Where in your life have you been living at 75%? Giving a little bit to everything and your whole self to nothing?

And what would it look like to give just one thing, your art, your partner, a friend, all of you this week?

WE'RE BACK IN TEH ROOM and if you've been "too busy to create," stuck in front of a blank page, or scared that making things will drain you, this one is for you.

Here's the reframe that changes everything: creation doesn't cost you capacity, it's where your capacity comes from.

In this In the Room episode, I take you inside two coaching rooms in Expansion that had the exact same conversation two days apart, and the question that made me rethink something I'd believed my whole life. We get into the difference between creating and producing, why desire is generative and not lack, the nervous-system reason the freeze only melts when you make something, and the metaphor that reframes the whole thing: you are not a well you have to ration. You're a spring.

We dive into

○ Why "I don't have the capacity to create" is almost always a different problem than you think

○ Creating vs producing (and why one drains you and one fills you)

○ Desire as generative overflow and LIFE FORCE

○ The nervous system reason creation melts the freeze (and why you can't wait to feel ready first)

○ How to stop rationing your own life force

○ Banks for the river: how structure serves flow instead of killing it

○ What actually drains your creative capacity (hint: it's not the creating)

○ Your 30-minute somatic-gym homework

Key points

○ "I don't have the capacity to create" usually means "I don't have the energy to produce." Producing drains you. Creating, from desire, with no outcome attached, fills you back up.

○ Desire isn't a hole you're trying to fill. It's overflow. It's life wanting more life through you, and a depleted body can't even produce it, so wanting again is proof you're coming back online.

○ You don't melt the freeze so you can create. You create to melt the freeze. The making is the medicine.

○ You're not a well you have to ration. You're a spring. It flows because flowing is its nature, and refusing to flow is the only thing that makes it stagnant.

○ Let structure (your calendar, your content pillars) be the banks of the river, not the river itself.

○ What actually drains you is the hovering: the planning, the "I'll do it tomorrow," the scrolling for inspiration. Not the creating.

References, Rabbit holes

• Alexis Bates, the Substack passage on desire ("one sign your body is coming back to life... desire is the sound of a body safe enough to yearn for more")
• Napoleon Hill, the idea of a burning desire
• Alan Watts, the universe experiencing itself through you
• Shakti, and the Kundalini and Tantric view of creative energy as the generative life force
• The nervous system: survival states, the freeze response, and the default mode network (future-visioning, imagination)
• Somatic experiencing, and treating creation as a "somatic gym"
• EFT: the "my ideas can take up space" tap

Mentioned and Linked

• My previous episode, Enter the Forest
• Expansion, my mastermind (doors open mid-to-late November, last round sold out all 50 spots in 3 hours, Volume 8 next). Join the waitlist.
• Creative Living

Journal Prompts

Where in your life have you been treating yourself like a well, waiting until you feel full enough to deserve to make the thing?

And what would you make this week, if you knew you were a spring?

Write it. Then go make the tiniest version of it. No one has to read it. The mission is just to prove to your own body that the water is still moving.

love you xxxx

What actually happens when you stop trying to do all the things, and go all in on just ONE offer?

Alexa joined Expansion last May not even following me, having read the sales page exactly once. Eight months later she had a completely different business. This is that story.

In this first episode of Expanded Stories (a new series where I sit down with Expansion alumni and let them tell it in their own words) Alexa walks us through what it actually looked and felt like to retire a $5k/month offer ecosystem (and mentality), go all in on one signature program, and build a pre-launch that sold $22k before doors even opened.

(I’ve NEVER shared so much about my launch methodology outside of Expansion!)

Spoiler: she cried retiring the intensive. It was uncomfortable. Her nervous system screamed. And then it worked.

In this episode we go into:

🍑 Why having multiple offers was actually keeping Alexa scattered — and what the mirror moment looked like

🍑 The tantric relationship with one offer — what it means to give it everything and have it give you everything back

🍑 The day she cried retiring a $5k/month intensive (and what happened next)

🍑 How to set up a waitlist that does the heavy lifting — the strategy is stupidly simple, gave Lex my whole strategy and now she sold $22k before doors even opened.

🍑 Why your offers compete with each other and how one offer fixes the confusion instantly

🍑 Capacity planning and yearly vision vs monthly chaos — the nervous system piece nobody talks about

🍑 Integration: what it actually means to do less, make more, and not feel guilty about it

🍑 Why generational wealth lives in your one signature offer

You’ve been warned:

Expansion (my business mastermind) opens its doors June 2nd. If you’re reading this, we are very close.

Every round has sold out in hours, so if you want to come play in Expansion v7 be on this waitlist and see you June 2nd on the applications ♡ love you all!!

About Alexa:

• Instagram: @alexacoaches
• One of One doors open: June 17th! here's the waitlist

Expansion queens:

Did you take Expansion and would love to come talk about your Expansion story?? girl DM me. Love you so much

So two Venus in Capricorn walk into a bar and sit down to talk about well basically everything to the point that we forgot we were recording a podcast.

Desiree Pais is the founder of Benshen: a community, course, and movement that started with six women on a yoga mat in a Williamsburg living room while she kicked her ex-boyfriend out every Saturday morning. This vision grew to 30 women, then 40, then the pandemic hit and 500 people signed up overnight, and she's here to spill the whole tea on Benshen's origin story and how thoughts TRULY turn into things. She's truly one of the most grounded-yet-wildly-alive women I've had the pleasure of talking to and this convo really deserves you to make a bevy grab a cig and sit down for it.

In this episode we go into:

🍑 How Benshen started with 6 women in Desi’s apartment/How expansion started with 5 women on zoom (yep the parallel lives are eerie in this episode)

🍑 The Mykonos files, the Berlin files (you'll understand when you hear it)

🍑 Why chaos is feminine and containers are masculine, and why you need both (Hi Birjiwan♡)

🍑 The urgency addiction: getting addicted to rock bottom as your fuel source (and how to stop that!)

🍑 How to call your power back, but also how to HOLD it when it comes

🍑 Descartes, philosophy, the mind-body split, and how it explains basically everything wrong with the world

🍑 Priestess archetypes hidden in plain sight: Persephone, the divine feminine, and reclaiming power

🍑 Feminine rage as a force for building, not destroying

🍑 Astrology, Venus in Capricorn, and why two psychopaths built their businesses exactly like this

The line from this episode that lives in my head:

"The fastest way to become powerful is to keep your word. The fastest way to lose power is to not do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it."

About Desiree:

• Instagram: @desireepais
• Benshen: benshen.co
• Benshen membership

Referenced in this episode:

• Becoming Supernatural — Joe Dispenza
• Women Who Run with the Wolves — Clarissa Pinkola Estés
• When God Was a Woman — Merlin Stone
• Mary Magdalene Revealed — Meggan Watterson
• The Magdalen Manuscript
• Dr. Carla Ionescu — history podcast
• Birjiwan — our mutual connection ❤️

Also since we are here, you already know:

Expansion Vol. 7 (my 4-month deep business and growth mastermind, starting in September) is launching next week. Applications open June 2nd, 5pm Europe / 11am New York

Make sure to join the waitlist right here if you're coming. All rounds have sold out in a few hours.

Okay hold my cigarette: you do deep, transformational work. Your know your shit. You know your body of work motherfucking changes and transforms people. But every time you sit down to write your landing page — or someone asks "so what do you do?" — you freeze.

Because what you actually help people with isn't a three-month result. It's a seed. An identity. A becoming that takes time to fully bloom. And your marketing brain keeps asking: how do I sell that?

This week inside Expansion, a marketing strategist came to the hot seat with exactly this question. And what cracked open is what this whole episode is about.

In this episode we go into:

🍑 Why you're not selling results, you're selling a seed (and how to actually say that)

🍑 The one step ahead reframe, why thinking that you need to be an "expert" is holding you back from meeting your most aligned clients

🍑 How your biggest mess-ups make you more qualified, not less (my $25k fee LLC tea)

🍑 The identity shift: selling the becoming, not the deliverables

🍑 The testimonial prompt that writes your copy for you

🍑 Your unique sauce: why the HOW is what makes you irreplaceable

🍑 Why your most human moments are your best marketing assets, always

Journal prompt from this episode:

Who do your clients become after working with you?

Not what results they get. Not how much money they make. Who are they becoming?

If you don't know yet: go ask them. Their words are your marketing copy.

Referenced in this episode:

• Ep. 02 — Embodied Marketing: Becoming the Invitation
• Capacity Over Currency — the essay
• Expansion Vol. 7 — applications open June 2nd, 5pm Europe / 11am New York

Want to ask a question for a future In the Room episode?

DM me intheroom on IG for the chatbox! Love ya!!

A fun one. Your time scarcity is keeping you out of the life you desire. Stop saying "when I have time" You have time. In this episode, you’ll see me work 3h weeks during my busiest season all year, and manage my ENERGY instead.

If I gave you infinite time right now, you still wouldn't do the million things you say you'd do with it. Because the problem was never time. It was always energy.

In this episode I recorded on the go (airport, Ibiza, in between) I walk you through the reframe that completely changed how I run my business while traveling, and the simple framework I use to stay in the game without draining myself.

In this episode we go into:

🍑 Why time management is the wrong game entirely

🍑 An honest (and chaotic) BTS of a 3h week during my busiest season

🍑 Energy as your real currency: where it leaks and how to get it back

🍑 The generate/respond framework: the simplest way to stay productive on the go (FIRST TIME OUTSIDE OF EXPANSION!!)

🍑 How to work from your phone without guilt (destigmatizing it, for real)

🍑 Deep work deep rest, how to truly enjoy a vacation

Journal prompt from this episode:

Where is your energy leaking right now?

Not your time. Your energy. Name three things:

tasks, relationships, habits, open loops, whatever it is that is draining you every day.

Then ask: what's one thing I can stop, delegate, or automate this week to get that energy back?

Referenced in this episode:

• Episode 01 — How to Make Responsibility Sexy (and Double Your Life With It)
• My VISION workshop (Free)
• Expansion Mastermind (I’m opening the doors soooooooon just sayen)

Want to ask a question for a future In the Room episode?

DM me intheroom all together for the questionbox ♡

DO WE LIKE THIS FORMAT??? let me know in the comments!