High-achieving women and successful entrepreneurs often reach a point where they're burnt out despite external success. The milestones keep rising, but the inner fulfillment doesn't. Externally, everything is extraordinary. But internally? Something feels off - rushed, heavy, urgent, or quietly disconnected.

This episode explores the deeper layers of entrepreneur burnout, leadership alignment, and the hidden gap between achievement and embodiment.

In this episode, I name a pattern I see in nearly every visionary woman and high-performing founder I advise: the moment your success begins to outpace your soul.

This isn't standard entrepreneur burnout. This isn't a mindset dip. It's a deeper misalignment between what you've built and the leader you're becoming.

Inside, I share:

• The invisible gap between achievement and embodiment, and why so many successful women experience it
• Why optimization, hustle, and traditional self-care can't solve entrepreneur burnout or leadership depletion
• How your body and nervous system reveal alignment long before your mind does
• The moment I realized I was living someone else's version of success — and the soul-aligned pivot that changed everything
• What becomes possible when your design, pace, and leadership finally align for sustainable expansion
• How Gene Keys can act as a blueprint for aligned decision-making and easeful success

This episode is for the accomplished woman entrepreneur, the female founder who built something extraordinary and is ready for success that feels aligned, embodied, sustainable, not just impressive on paper.

Because success matters. But soul-aligned success - where your business expands and your life becomes more delicious - is where your next level of leadership, clarity, and power lives.

If you're ready for a new way of leading:

If you're moving through a season of expansion and desire support where your business grows and your life becomes more spacious, embodied, and deeply resourced:

→ Explore Concierge — my intimate, world-class advisory partnerships for world-class women ready to lead from alignment, not depletion.

alexiausgaard.com/concierge

→ Or begin with ILLUMINATE — my signature 90-minute Gene Keys experience to decode your blueprint and reveal your aligned strategy

alexiausgaard.com/illuminate

Continue Your Journey:

• Episode 14: The Gene Keys — Your Blueprint for World-Class Success Without Efforting
• Connect on Instagram: @alexia_usgaard

If This Episode Resonated

Share it with a fellow entrepreneur or leader navigating their own season of expansion — your reflection may be exactly what she needs today.

And if you feel called, leaving a review helps Elevate Daily reach more visionary women devoted to alignment, easeful leadership, and soul-based expansion.

With love & devotion,

Alexia

And the thing I find is I am here for the systems, I'm here for the sacred structures that support us, but if you are not in alignment with your authentic design, no amount of structure or optimization is going to truly give you that relief because all it is is a bigger trap that shrinks you even more and more into not being your fullest self. And we all know that feeling. It's like this physical feeling where we're being contracted in our body to try to fit into a mold of what often traditional

Society has told us when we're all pioneers, we're all here to pave very unique paths forward and that requires for us to really get honest about what true authentic support, what true authentic systems actually support us and the rhythms that actually support us. Welcome to Elevate Daily, the podcast for those ready to elevate their life one intentional day at a time.

I'm your host, Alexia Uscard, here to give you a permission slip to unapologetically savor the beauty and richness of life. Join me as we explore modern rituals, self leadership, the gene keys, and the art of elevating your health, wealth, love, and leadership. It's time to elevate. Let's dive in. Hello, hello, and welcome back to Elevate Daily.

I'm Alexia Usgaard and I am so enthused as always to have you here for today's conversation. And honestly, today's conversation is one I find that most successful, accomplished women really struggle to talk about. And this is a conversation that's not had typically in the meeting rooms. It's not had in the social media conversations and it might not even be had with your closest friends, those who trust deeply.

And I really felt called as it's a conversation I have a lot with my clients. It's something I've navigated very intimately on my own journey and it felt intuitively time to actually speak about it. So to really talk about it, I wanted to just paint the moment to see if you really recognize this experience. So you hit the achievement, you hit the milestone, maybe you close the deal, like you closed a client you always dreamed about closing.

You know, maybe it's that you got handed a really incredible opportunity or things are moving really fast. Things are expanding. Your team's expanding. Things are happening. And there's a part of you that's deeply grateful, that's really excited, that's enthused about everything that's happening because you're ambitious. You're someone who really wants to show up in life, to show fully and to consistently be on the path of growth and expansion. And the part that's not talked about is

likely as these very exciting milestones are happening, you probably have had that moment where someone in your life has gone to you and said, maybe it's your partner, maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a client, someone in your community says, my goodness, congratulations, does it just feel amazing? And probably that moment you have, you just take a moment and you smile back and you go, yes, of course. And it does in some part of you. And there's this other part of you that's also feeling this deep soul truth, which is also like, if only you knew.

exhausting it is. If only you knew I feel honestly on the verge of burnout a lot of the time. If only you knew that actually I feel quite a lot of it feels really heavy to carry and that I'm honestly not sure who I can really talk to about because I should just be grateful and I'm so lucky to have what I've created and I've worked so hard for all of this and this is what I wanted to bring forward as a big conversation which is what I think of as that gap.

the gap between what is externally happening, the metrics, the achievements that are happening, the success, and the internal experiencing of it, the internal savoring of it, the internal alignment with your soul. And so this is what I mean. This gap is what I mean when I say that your success has outpaced your soul. I really mean that it's, again, the external world you're experiencing feels like you're not able on an

level to fully receive it, to fully experience it. And if you're really, really honest, it's like right when the next thing happens, you're already three steps into the next, whether that's the next revenue goal, whether that's the next team member you need to hire, whether that's the next opportunity you want to land, right? And it's that feeling of always more, always going and so little experiencing, so little melting, so little like landing.

feeling deeply present in all that you have created and built. And so in today's conversation, I really wanted to name this to talk about this and also talk about what can be that antidote, what can deeply support you in getting to honor that when you're on that journey where I find your success is outpacing your soul, there's two elements. There's one, the actual pace itself is that you're going, you're doing. There's always that energy of proving.

that's actually very much at the root of it. Or there's the effort dynamic. You feel like, okay, I'm achieving, I'm doing all the things. And if I'm really honest, it requires so much hard work. It requires so much of me. And I just wish I could hold it a little lighter and feel a little bit more supported in the journey. And it's not just support in terms of like, I'm just one self-care thing away. I'm not just one sound bath away from feeling relaxed. I'm not just even one vacation away from relaxed.

It's that deep energy of feeling like this desire to know that your energy is truly leveraged, that your energy is really being focused on what is of highest service with your gifts, with what you are so naturally talented at, and also letting go of a lot of the weights, the burdens, the responsibilities that are signaling that something's not aligned. So yeah, let's just dive right on into this. So.

I want to just highlight a couple more ways in which you can inventory whether or not you're having this experience. So a big one is if you find you're often in that energy of needing to make decisions really quickly, it can feel like I've got to make things urgently happen. I've got to do things all the time, that energy. It's when you can find that you're struggling to be fully present with the people you love most. You know, it's those...

gatherings, it's those birthday parties, it's those spaces where your body is there, but if you're really honest, your full being isn't necessarily in the room. It's those moments where you have all these ideas, but at the end of the day, there's a lot of truth in those moments when you're by yourself, where you're going, will I truly be able to hold it all? And also not sacrifice so many of the other areas of my life that I care about without sacrificing.

so many moments that actually do in my soul matter to me. And I think that I really want a name that makes this all very tricky and why it can be hard to take a pause and to notice that this is happening is because, and I've seen this again on my own journey and with so many others, is what got you to this moment and what got you to this level of success was from that way that you've been operating. It's from that way in which in many ways you

worked at a very specific pace, you probably put in a good amount of effort. I have no doubts that you're a highly competent woman who knows how to really show up and really is committed to showing up for excellence. And now what I'd love to invite you is if you're having that feeling, if you're having that undercurrent nagging feeling, that whisper that's coming through, or your body has been communicating, another really big way I have to name that your soul will speak to you is through your body. It's through that burnout that just

If you're really honest, you can't quite shake. It's through inflammation your body will show. It's through just this knowing in your body that you're not as connected to it, that your sensuality hasn't had space. It's like maybe you are someone who even wants to like be intimate with someone you love, your partner, but in all honesty, sometimes you're just really in your head and you're thinking already about so many things on your to-do list, that it's hard to really receive the fullness of pleasure that you know in your truth you actually desire and actually crave.

and know it would have a huge impact on these other areas of your life. And so it comes to this moment where you have to realize and feel into yourself and go like, okay, I honor and I am so proud of everything that's led me to this moment, but there is a different way. There is a different opportunity to go, do I want to lead in this next season, this next chapter of my life, my leadership, my business, all areas of my life from this depletion, or do I want to choose the path?

where I actually get to feel so much more in flow and so much more at ease in what I'm creating. And a lot of that comes from an awareness of you've got to honor what you've built. Honor that it's no longer time anymore to fix it on the constant building of it all and actually honor that you have arrived at a point where you've built a strong foundation. Now it's time to allow yourself to expand.

And that expansion is truly gonna come from a next level awareness of who you truly are, what your unique rhythm is, what your unique design is, and come back into that deep connection with yourself and do that soul level work. And one thing I wanna name is I find a lot of the traditional conversation that's happening in the space, especially the leadership space is in three core categories. And I know them.

I know them so intimately because I've watched how I, and I'll give a personal story about this, how I literally just have to catch that part of myself whenever I go into that part of myself who thinks she needs to move faster, she needs to do more. I have a loving way where I actually call that part of myself turbo. Like I just will have a very sweet moment with myself, like, hello, I see you turbo. I see that part of you. And I'm going to gently remind you, you don't have to do it this way because that's just conditioning is what I found most of the time.

And part of the conditioning, a lot of the social narrative that I find gets a lot of us women trapped is in three core areas. So when we feel this gap between, again, where our soul feels like it's being like the pace which we're moving doesn't feel aligned and we're just doing way too much effort, we can often be told first, optimize. You need to optimize. You need to just get one more strategy. And so that can lead you to thinking, if I just hire the next person, if I just get my next system on track.

If I just figure out the next strategy, then I will finally feel free again. And what I'm doing, I'll finally feel nourished. And the thing I find is I am here for the systems, I'm here for the sacred structures that support us. But if you are not in alignment with your authentic design, no amount of structure or optimization is going to truly give you that relief because all it is is a bigger trap that shrinks you even more and more into not being your fullest self.

We all know that feeling. It's like this physical feeling where we're being contracted in our body to try to fit into a mold of what often traditional society has told us when we're all pioneers. We're all here to pave very unique paths forward. And that requires for us to really get honest about what true authentic support, what true authentic systems actually support us and the rhythms that actually support us. The second, of course, is the hustle, right? you just need to hustle harder. You just need to get through to the next milestone.

And then once you get there, then you'll finally feel the relief. Then you'll finally feel like you can enjoy your experience of life. I how many times have we all been there? The problem is the goalpost always changes because I know you, you're someone who's here to consistently grow. You're so driven by your mission. And so whether you hit that next revenue milestone, we all know there's going to be the next one. Once you get that next team hire, you're going to be onto the next way to expand your team. It's that consistent dynamic. And so

When you do that, find we often just find we're in a never ending trap where there's no ending point. And then we find that we just deplete ourselves so deeply in the process. And then the third classic thing in conversation is self-care. And don't get me wrong, I am such a believer in self-care and I stand for it. I prioritize it all the time. But if again, you're having this gap, this misalignment, no amount of self-care

will get you to finally feel aligned, I find. So whether it's the, I'll just book a massage. I'll just book acupuncture. I'll just go on that vacation. Then I'll finally, that vacation for three days, and then I'll come back and suddenly I'll be so replenished. I mean, how many of us have had that moment where you do it, and then in all honesty, you come back from that vacation, you're like, I need another one of those. And it's again, just a reminder that no self-care can fill the void of not being in alignment.

with your soul and your unique, authentic way you're here to lead. And so a really good way to think of this, I know as everyone knows, I'm very visual. I love to think of things in kind of silly, playful ways is that with self-care as this example, if you tried to run a marathon and you tried to run it in high heels, like we're talking stilettos, right? Like you are not gonna run your best marathon and...

Frankly, you might not even finish it because even if you, you know, take your shoes off and massage your calves, you massage your feet, you try to fix it. I mean, you're gonna be going through the entire experience in pain. And this is what I mean when I say you're not in alignment with your soul is we all came with a unique design. We all came with a unique way we're here to operate. And oftentimes,

It's not that we don't have the competency that we're not capable, that you don't have the work ethic, that you don't have the drive, you don't have the discipline, all of these things that are thrown around so often, especially in hustle culture, oftentimes is you have the wrong shoes on. You're trying to run your business, trying to lead your way with high heel stilettos when in reality you're like, I need to be barefoot. I need completely different shoes. Or maybe you're like, I don't even like running. I don't want to run. I don't want to run this marathon.

And so I just like to invite you to think about that and just in a cheeky way, get honest about the problem might be not be that next strategy, that next massage, that next grit your way through it situation. It might actually just be that you're like, I need different shoes or I need no shoes at all. Or I need to completely change the activity that I'm focused on and realize that that's actually where that deep nagging feeling that again, some for some of us, it's loud.

For some of us, it's been trying to speak to us for a while. And for others of us, it's that quiet voice that when we truly sit with ourselves is constantly speaking to us. It's the sounds and the feelings in our bodies that we can't pretend we don't intuitively feel all the time. And so a very personal story I'll just give as an example of this is, so when I was in my Silicon Valley part of my life and I was working alongside

billionaires, futurists, like really powerful thought leaders. I was around them watching the strategies, watching the pace, watching the level of the work ethic, seeing how we had the longest hours of working, how there was just this constant pressure to be on, to do, to create more, to prove yourself. And honestly, through that experience, that's what I thought it took. That's what I thought it took to be extraordinary, to be excellent, to create a world-class career and

you know, leadership mission that I'm proud of. And I did it. And I kept showing up and I just remember how much I fought to keep it going. But in truth, I would go home at night and my body hurt. I had so much inflammation in my body. had, yeah, I tried to do all of the massages. I tried to do all the acupuncture. I tried to even like weave in little bits of creativity to try to spark some of that joy back.

But even though I was, quote, successful externally and getting all of the external validation and I felt so important in many ways, or I was talking to such important people in truth inside of myself, I felt so disconnected from things I really deeply value. I felt so disconnected from my body. I felt so disconnected from really getting to feel like when I was at family gatherings or spending time with people I really cherish that I was fully there. You I was there, quotes, but I wasn't.

fully there, making the memories, making the experiences. And even in like these really exciting milestones we would hit, of course I'd hit a milestone and then I'd already be onto three wins in my future that I needed to get to. I was in a lot of that dynamic of proving. And again, in so many ways, I'm incredibly grateful for that experience. I can really see how that entire journey shaped so much of who I am and how I show up in the world. And there came a point though,

where I was being very clearly shown, it's time. You're meeting that gap where your success has outpaced your soul and you're not actually operating from your truest authentic blueprint and design. And it was through that experience, those just nagging, those little whispers that I pulled the gene keys out again, where I went and I looked again at my blueprint and it was through looking at my gene keys.

through having this roadmap that really helps you see who you are in a soul level, what you're here to do, how you're most naturally here to lead, create, prosper, all of it. I just went, I'm out of alignment. This isn't my path to success. This is a beautiful, shiny path to success. This is someone else's version of success. I'm following someone else's playbook to be successful. And how many of us can relate to that? And so was through that moment,

of coming back into my design that then I saw a new path forward for myself. I saw a much more authentic version forward. And again, I honor that there was some things I had to be willing to release because I would say the biggest thing is often not what are we gonna take on more of? It's usually what do we say no to. And this is why I feel like in my work, I've definitely been coined by clients as the refinement queen is because I'm here for your refinement era. I'm here for honoring

what you've built. I'm here for honoring that there's so much already to treasure and who you are, what you've created. I'm not here for you just slowing down for the sake of slowing down or just letting go of everything, just because I'm here for you having that space to get so clear about what's that one no that will create so much more space for you to spend time with your full-body yeses.

What's that one opportunity that seems so shiny or that one project that seems so shiny or it seems to be working so well for everyone else, yet in all honesty feels heavy and also not just heavy and exhausting in the process for you to do, but it also takes away your precious time and resources from doubling down, tripling down in the areas that have a lot of 10x possibility for you to do so much more.

in terms of the impact you're wanting, create the influence you're wanting, create the impact, impact your team, whatever it may be. And so that's what I really stand for. And this is why I'm so big on bringing you into connection with knowing your blueprint, because I have seen over and over again that nothing solves that tension until you truly come back into remembrance of who you truly are, how you were created to do the incredible work you're here to do in the world. And when you get into a pace,

where your success and your soul are in alignment, that is where so much of the magic lives. That's where those who are successful and showing up and doing their work are operating from that energy of overflow. And what I have found is when you really come back into that space, there's so much more possibility in terms of expansion that's just waiting for you. And so there's that moment when you're breaking free from a lot of the conditioning, a lot of the narratives, oftentimes what we've been told we should be good at, or we've gotten really good at, but it's actually not

our greatest gifts, and it asks you to have a deeper level of faith in knowing just how valuable you truly are and just how valuable your unique contribution is. And I'll share one example of a client I have worked with who, gosh, she shared with me, she said, Lex, I have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in not just time, money, resource, but also just the level of depletion

that it would have created on her journey. So she's a seven figure plus entrepreneur. She's doing, she's very committed to her mission. She serves an incredible clientele. And there was this point where she had gotten, you know, classic feedback, strategic advice that she should have a podcast. That would make sense as her great next step for success in her company's growth and expansion and where she wanted to go with the company. And when we looked, when I was with her in session and looked at her blueprint,

There is nothing in her blueprint that highlights that that would be of highest service, that that really would leverage her gifts. And we really saw through that experience what would actually be the best way. She's someone here who's really meant to create culture. She's someone who's here to really cultivate intimacy. And that intimacy is so much of where she also finds her joy. She likes to feel connected to people. She likes to feel like the one-on-one connection experience really lights her up.

And so when we really looked at the podcast possibility versus some other channel she could focus on, we got really clear on a different actual soul aligned strategy for her to expand her company in a way that lets her feel just so much more ease in who she is and what naturally also in all honesty has worked for her. Cause that's the other thing is oftentimes we get thrown these new strategies because again, we're always told, you know, you're successful, add more, add a new revenue stream.

add a new potential offering, add a new insert project, social media stream, because that will just make your company even more successful. That'll make what your mission is here for even more influential when sometimes that actually creates so much more long-term depletion and actually doesn't create the expansion. That's really possible for you. And not only did I love that on this call she felt so much relief, I watched so much light come back into her as she started to feel way less heavy. And I felt that just exhale.

As she went, yeah, that's that feeling I've been having this entire process of trying to set up this podcast. In my mind, it makes sense. In my body, in my being, and definitely on a soul level, in truth, it doesn't feel like where I truly want to channel my energy and channel my time. And I got to see that just a few months later, and as she focused and as she doubled down on the strategies we really honed in on, that not only did she find that

she experienced more success and did well, she also found herself feeling a lot more joyful and much more just presence in the experience of it. Because again, she wasn't trying to follow anyone else's playbook. She just really doubled down on her gifts as a visionary, on her gifts as a culture creator, and on her gifts of how she's truly here to be of highest service for her company and her clientele and where she wants to go long term.

So as I've just shared this client's experience, I just wanted to name a couple other things that become possible when you really come back into alignment with your soul. And that is decisions. Like a big one I noticed is your decision-making gets to just feel so much more easeful. You get to find that you're a better decision-maker, a clearer decision-maker, that you're making really high quality decisions that are truly in highest service to your greatest contribution and where you're meant to be.

I find another big piece is you finally land more into your nervous system. You finally land more into your body. You finally let go of that frequency of proving and feeling like you have to constantly do more to feel like enough and stop letting that hungry ghost, you know, we all can relate to that hungry ghost of our ego that always tells us that we should do more, be more, experience more. And once we get there, we'll finally feel like enough.

And when you really come back into your soul, you get to really honor the wholeness of who you are, the beauty in what you're getting to spend your precious energy creating. But instead of doing it from a place of feeling like you have to do it to complete yourself, to... When you do it from a place of, I'm already whole, I'm already complete, I already am in deep connection to divine love. And this gets to be a way in which I get to expand my heart, my capacity to share.

and the love that wants to channel through me in a bigger way. And you don't have to choose. I think there's a whole dynamic that gets played out and there's, and I definitely faced it so much. The amount of times and so many subtle messages I basically got told that it's not possible to have a big life and be deeply present. I say you can't have both. The key code is again, to really ensure that you're operating from your design, that you're operating from your unique

playbook and strategy, not trying to be like anyone else and not trying to follow anyone else's specific path. And so what I love to invite you to really connect with is from this episode, just taking a moment to really notice like what has stuck out to you, what has stayed as that little whisper in your body and being, and more than anything to know that you're so not alone and that

I have seen over and over again that this is a conversation that is happening in so many ways inside of a lot of us, but is a hard one to really bring forward because again, it's the end. You can be so grateful and so proud of everything you've created. And I believe you should be. I really believe, and I don't ever say should slightly, but I really do believe you should, no matter what you've created, no matter what you've done at this point, really take a moment to celebrate and be proud of who you've shown up as and what you have created.

private small number of clients in this way for the year, but it's really this devotional year where we get to go so deep and you have my bespoke, very personalized support on knowing your particular blueprint, looking at everything you're creating, everything you're expanding, not from a place of me telling you you should do less or be less, but actually from a place of like, hey, there is so much more of you we can receive. There is so much more of you that's ready to shine and you get to do it in a way that gets to feel so well-resourced.

and so you in the process. And through that process of really making sure everything is refined, everything is clear, that we're really focused on the levers that matter most in your life, we also ritualize your life, your leadership, your team, your culture, whatever is of highest service for you and what you're navigating. And more than anything, this is where pleasure, I find, gets to come back into your experience of success. This is where you get to feel like your life.

and your leadership is delicious, that you feel it in your body, that you feel it in the way you show up in the world, and that you also, again, get to feel nourished by it all versus depleted. And so if that resonates, I would love to invite you to send me a DM on Instagram and just say concierge and I'll make sure I send you the application, or you can find it on my website, the link below, and just fill out your application and see if it will be an aligned fit. And more than anything,

I just wanna take a moment to celebrate you, to honor this space together as I never take it lightly. And I just feel like there's never been a more important time than now for us to really honor that in a world that's moving even faster than many of us can even put words to describe with things like AI and so much innovation coming so rapidly. I will very confidently say I don't think it's ever been more important than now to really ensure that you are connected to your soul.

that you ensure you know your voice, your highest vision, the truth of who you are on a deep level and know how important it is not just for you, but for everyone. Because you have the codes, you have the unique gifts that are here to make a very specific contribution at this time. And that contribution gets to feel easeful, it gets to feel pleasurable, and it gets to feel like you get to enjoy all that you create in the process. And so, yeah, I'll leave you with that.

I just want to take a moment as always to say thank you for being you, thank you for being here, and until next time, I hope you continue to elevate your life one intentional day at a time.

If this podcast has added something meaningful to your day, it would mean the world to me if you could take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, please follow or subscribe to Elevate Daily on your favorite podcast platform. When you do, you'll never miss an episode and it helps us keep bringing you the intentional inspiration you love. Just tap the plus sign or click follow on the show page wherever you listen. Second, if you're feeling generous, leave a quick five star rating and review.

Your words mean so much and help others discover this space where we elevate our lives together. And finally, share this episode with someone who could use a little elevation today. And most importantly, thank you so much for being you. Thank you for being here. We're really on this journey together. Until next time, I hope you elevate your life one intentional day at a time.